The Human cost of Communism - 100 Million

A new book claims that the victims of communism last century number between 85 and 100 million. But, even before their 848-page "Black Book of Communism'' was published, the 11 experts split up in bitter dispute over their gruesome findings.

Reuters said: "Were Stalin's purges, Pol Pot's genocide and the millions of other deaths under the hammer and sickle central to the communist system? Were they crimes against humanity on the same par as Nazi atrocities?

"The 11 historians, many of them Maoists, Trotskyites or communists in their rebellious younger years, examined the history of the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Eastern Europe and non-governing communist movements to produce their detailed estimates of victims. Reviewers hailed the ``Black Book'' as a first global study of the victims of one of the two totalitarianism's that have marked the 20th century.

It seems that some of the researchers behind the book are upset that the book makes the communists look like criminals or mass murderers "like the nazis". This is incredible. If National Socialism, Fascism, Peronism, Distributism, Social Credit, the Falange or any other group/ideology linked with 'Nationalism' killed anything like 100 million it would be on the news every night - and bear in mind this book doesn't cover events like the French Revolution that happened in the 18th century.

The book estimates communists claimed 65 million lives in China, 20 million in the former Soviet Union, two million in Cambodia and North Korea each, 1.7 million in Africa, one million in Vietnam and Eastern Europe respectively and 150,000 in Latin America.

Reuters continues: ``The facts are stubborn and they show the communist regimes committed crimes against about 100 million people''...

"Werth, whose detailed descriptions of Lenin's terror regime were rated by reviewers as some of the best parts of the book, said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and communism" Yes, about 100 million.