Courtois, Werth, Panné, Paczkowski, Bartosek, Margolin
Il libro nero del comunismo

This hefty block of travertine, already well-reviewed by @Macaco and difficult to digest for me as a communist, is, and it was predictable, a work that presents aspects on which it is right to reflect, meditate, do a “mea culpa,” and discuss. However, the story loses in quality and content, leading to gratuitous and contradictory heavy shadows cast for the sole purpose of portraying the subject in question as a machine fit only for producing corpses. Accordingly, works have been written in open polemic with this book, highlighting its many controversial aspects. Not to mention that some authors have even gone so far as to admit some exaggerations.

I gave a medium score to the work for consistency. One cannot be silent or timidly tergiversate on the crimes committed by the sickle and the hammer. The data is chilling, the descriptions gruesome, and the research (the authors are CNRS researchers or prestigious university professors) was meticulous and effective. But there is Communism and "communism," and often, even too much, in this book, they want to confuse the latter with the former. It’s pointless for me to sit here and declare for the umpteenth time that there are diametrically opposed differences between the Marxist manifesto and what came out of it. The problem, as I’ve repeated on other occasions, is man.

Already the title is controversial. If a "black" book exists that rightly highlights the crimes, it means there would be a "white" one highlighting the merits, just as it has been for Capitalism or Christianity. It’s no coincidence that the volume "The Century of Communisms" already has a different imprint. It explains that indeed, and this is non-negotiable, there have been various interpretations of Communism, and the differences are shown by the conduct of those who came to power. One thing is the Communism of Marx, Engels, Luxembourg, Trotsky, Dubcek, Gramsci, Berlinguer, Gorbachev, and another is the "communism" of Stalin, Beria, Brezhnev, Hoxha, Ceausescu, Pol Pot, Mao. There is still much to define about Lenin and Castro, and I do not consider myself the right person to do so. Premising that it is not about justifying them, but while the first needs to be analyzed in the context of the October Revolution, for the second, there are audiovisual documents by Oliver Stone and Michael Moore (two Americans) that would be reevaluating him. Unfortunately, the worst prevailed, and history leaves no doubts.

This does not divert me from condemning the contradictions and inaccuracies of the book, and I assure you there are many. The most contested, chilling, sadistic, and indecorous factor is the “count of the dead.” An element used by the authors for the sole purpose of demonizing the phenomenon as much as possible, with gratuitous convictions, (in my opinion...doing a calculation...) sometimes non-existent references, approximate calculations as in the chapter on China, where it easily goes between 2 and 5 million (Page 448) or between 20 and 43 million (Page 461) as if they were peanuts, always with an upward rounding, (and this is expressly defined) as if it were a macabre mathematical formula.

The peak in calculations is reached in the chapter on North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos, by Pierre Rigoulot, with a disgraceful snippet (Page 523) that I MUST report in full: “Considering that camp no.22, according to a witness’s estimate, holds 10,000 people, and every day 5 of them die, and given that the total number of detainees in North Korean concentration camps is 200,000 people, this amounts to a total of 100 deaths per day, meaning 36,500 per year. Multiplying this number by 45 years (from 1953 to 1998), one could say that Korean communism is directly responsible for about 1.5 million deaths.” Rigoulot? Shame on you!

Another shocking chapter is that on Cambodia by Jean-Louis Margolin. Besides the usual disgraceful always approximate counting (Page 552), there is much to discuss about the conduct of Pol Pot and his dear "Khmer Rouge." I wonder: but what does Communism have to do with a criminal madman who compares the so-called "Communist Party of Kampuchea" with Angkor (Angka), (Pages 562-567-584) a mystical Hindu site that the Khmer adored. What the heck is the connection. The Khmer Rouge? Comparing a crowded rabble of beardless, illiterate fools with Communism? What could they understand or know about Communism, children avoiding torturing and killing you if you could tell them Aesop’s fables! (Page 576). One broken lance in favor of Margolin. Falling into contradiction, after unraveling fierce brutality and bloody data, he passes a hand on his conscience in the paragraph “A Khmer Exception?” (Page 578), practically admitting he had exaggerated, also highlighting the questionable presence of Pol Pot on-site. His clandestineness began in 1963 and lasted until after 1975, the year the regime collapsed. Even his family was swept away by the deportations. (Page 566). But how can a person with some conscience compare insane murderers like Stalin or Pol Pot to the beautiful but utopian Marxist thought?

Then the absurd comparison with Nazism, (Page 15) rendering it less horrid since it would have caused “only” fewer deaths. An operation by undertakers that the authors, if they were really professional, could have spared. Out of respect above all, and then to not crudely distort the status of what should be a volume of history or historiographical critique. The back cover talks of 85 million victims, then clashing with the 100 million counted in Courtois’ chapter, the most controversial one, (15 million more or less, what difference would it make?).

Inaccuracies also on the side of the infamous "Soviet censorship," (Page 17) where many crimes would have been denied or concealed until the regime collapsed in 1990 or otherwise not disseminated through press, cinema, or literature. Apart from the Katyn massacre, brought to light thanks to Gorbachev, nothing is more false. The contradictions abound. This can be noted from the sources to which the researchers referred, some of which were published during the regime or well before its end, not remembering the famous, “de-Stalinization” process (1956) wanted by Khrushchev (Page 22), and the statements by Solzhenitsyn, both spoken and written, from "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1964) of which there is a homonymous film by Casper Wrede from 1971 to “The Gulag Archipelago” (1973), the book by Anatoly Marchenko written under Brezhnev in 1969 published in Italy by Rusconi, and the written testimonies of Ivan Solovenits in 1936, under Stalin! Not to mention the forced collectivization and the clashes between kulaks and peasants filmed by Dovzhenko in “Earth” (1930) and Eisenstein in “The General Line” (1926-1929). Then there is the interesting chapter on the exit from Stalinism (Page 235) and the paragraph "The Hunt for Trotskyites" (Page 287), which make one reflect much on the suppression of Communists wanted and practiced by “communists.” And these are some.

Finally, the closure by Courtois with the chapter "Why," where the contradictions are rampant, and an attempt is made to even "justify" the phenomenon just martyred. Just read the positions foreseen by Marx (Pages 680, 681), the context of the October Revolution, and what would have driven Lenin to overturn the Tsarist regime (Page 682) and the context of the Soviet experience of the "Great Terror" (Pages 684, 685), to conclude it all with the peak of contradiction on page 688 where the author poses a fierce doubt: what is Marxist in Leninism before 1914 and, especially, in that after 1917?

In this context, one would like to say: "Dear authors of this very interesting document, premising the fundamental importance and moral, historical, just necessity of the data, the research elements, the story told, the condemnation of such heinous acts, could you have written this book, as much as possible, with greater objectivity, coherence, and less hypocrisy? I believe so, otherwise the controversies and the drafting of books and documents (also published by CNRS researchers, the same as the authors of the black book), in response to your meticulous work, would not have occurred.

For the next time.