User talk:65.92.98.217

Hey comrades, this is a post from the Communism 101 facebook group (not associated with /r/communism101) that I think could be super helpful for loads of questions we get asked here. Thanks to Kyle Joseph for letting us copy it onto here.

Please send a modmail if you have any suggestions.

THE "DEBUNKING ANTI-COMMUNISM" MASTERPOST

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE "ATROCITIES" OF SOCIALISM, CHECK HERE FIRST!

Almost daily, this forum rehashes decades-old chestnuts about communist history, ranging from cold war tales of poverty and famine, to ludicrous myths about alleged genocides. To reduce the clutter, I'll present some basic resources refuting these myths. If you have suggested additions for the database, just let me or another admin know, and odds are we'll throw it up here.

Let's begin. For now, I'll just cover the main controversies that spring to mind, but please remind me of anything huge you feel I've overlooked.

Note: Many internet providers in the United States and Europe have blocked access to Library Genesis, which hosts many of the works listed for download below. These are the links that begin "http://libgen.in..." An easy solution for downloading them is to use Tor, a free anonymous internet browser, to download them. If you cannot download them at first with Tor, click on the onion icon in the top left of the program and select "New Identity" until you find one that works.

SECTION 1: THE SOVIET UNION AND EASTERN EUROPE ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 1: THE SOVIET UNION MANUFACTURED A FAMINE IN UKRAINE RESOURCE 1: Fraud, Famine, and Fascism by Douglas Tottle RESOURCE 2: The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933 by Mark Tauger RESOURCE 3: Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933 by Mark Tauger RESOURCE 4: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 by Davies and Wheatcroft RESOURCE 5: Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 2: THE SOVIET UNION REPRESSED AND KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE RESOURCE 1: The Triumph of Evil by Austin Murphy RESOURCE 2: Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Syzmanski RESOURCE 3: Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens RESOURCE 4: Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives by Getty and Manning RESOURCE 5: Origins of the Great Purges by J. Arch Getty RESOURCE 6: The Road to Terror by J. Arch Getty RESOURCE 7: Other studies by historian by J. Arch Getty RESOURCE 8: The Legacy of Stalinism by "brown-eggs" RESOURCE 9: Khrushchev Lied by Grover Furr RESOURCE 10: Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti RESOURCE 11: Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' Is False by Grover Furr ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 3: THE SOVIET UNION AND THE EASTERN BLOC HAD NO DEMOCRACY RESOURCE 1: Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sydney and Beatrice Webb RESOURCE 2: Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Syzmanski RESOURCE 3: Socialism Betrayed by Keeran and Kenny RESOURCE 4: Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941 by Robert Thurston RESOURCE 5: Democracy, East Germany, and the Berlin Wall by Stephen Gowans RESOURCE 6: The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism by V.L. Allen RESOURCE 7: The 1936 Soviet Constitution RESOURCE 8: Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 4: SOCIALISM IS AN ECONOMIC FAILURE RESOURCE 1: Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowans RESOURCE 2: From Farm to Factory by Robert Allen RESOURCE 3: The Rise of Socialism by William Foster RESOURCE 4: We Lived Better Then by Stephen Gowans RESOURCE 5: The Need for Planning by Joseph Ball ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 5: EVERYBODY HATED SOCIALISM RESOURCE 1: Homesick for a Dictatorship RESOURCE 2: 60% of Russians Want Communism Back RESOURCE 3: Former Soviet Countries See More Harm from Breakup RESOURCE 4: Russians say Aug 1991 events are tragedy, not triumph of democracy RESOURCE 5: Struggling Romanians Yearn for Communism RESOURCE 6: Tajikistan Pines for Old Soviet Union Strength RESOURCE 7: Referendum on the Preservation of the USSR RESOURCE 8: Central Asia in Nostalgia for the Soviet Period RESOURCE 9: Freest Under Czech Communism! RESOURCE 10: Seven Myths about the USSR by Stephen Gowans ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 6: LIFE UNDER SOCIALISM WAS TERRIBLE RESOURCE 1: An experiment in living socialism: Bulgaria then and now by F.S. RESOURCE 2: Growing Up Under Communism Was The Happiest Time Of My Life by Zsuzsanna Clark SECTION 2: THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 1: MAO KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE RESOURCE 1:Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? by Joseph Ball RESOURCE 2:Monster or Liberator? by Carlos Martinez RESOURCE 3: The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao RESOURCE 4: Was Mao Really a Monster? The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Benton and Chun RESOURCE 5: How did Mao manage to kill ~78 million people? by Godfree Roberts ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 2: CHINA WAS A TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP RESOURCE 1: The Rise of the Chinese People's Communes by Anna Louise Strong RESOURCE 2: The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution by E. L. Wheelwright RESOURCE 3: Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton RESOURCE 4: Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton RESOURCE 5: Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution by William Hinton SECTION 3: CUBA ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 1: CHE WAS A BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHER RESOURCE 1: Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson RESOURCE 2: Debunking the 'Che Guevara Was Racist!' Lie by Cuervo Rojo ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 2: CUBA HAS NO DEMOCRACY AND IS A HORRIBLE PLACE TO LIVE RESOURCE 1: 20 Reasons to Support Cuba RESOURCE 2: Cuba: A Revolution in Motion by Isaac Saney RESOURCE 3: Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion by Arnold August + http://www.democracyintheus.com/ RESOURCE 4: Cuban Democracy Fact Sheet RESOURCE 5: All in This Together: Cuba's Participatory Democracy RESOURCE 6: The Elected Delegate and the Dissident in Cuba's Municipal Elections by Arnold August RESOURCE 7: 2002 Cuban Constitution RESOURCE 8: Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba by Linda Fuller SECTION 4: THE DPRK ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 1: NORTH KOREANS BELIEVE IN UNICORNS AND THEY THINK KIM JONG-UN IS IMMORTAL RESOURCE 1: Western DPRK Propaganda: The Worst, Occasionally Hilarious, and Often Racist, Lies by Alyx Mayer RESOURCE 2: Anti-DPRK Propaganda War – a Cavalcade of Comedy by Red Youth RESOURCE 3: Tourist who took camera inside North Korea shocked by 'ordinary' lives of citizens ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 2: THE DPRK IS A FASCIST MONARCHY RESOURCE 1: Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea by Vince Sherman RESOURCE 2: How to Think about Socialism in Korea RESOURCE 3: Understanding North Korea by Stephen Gowans RESOURCE 4: A Model of Democratic and Participatory Socialist Planning by MasCapital RESOURCE 5: Constitution of the DPRK RESOURCE 6: Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development by Brun and Hersch RESOURCE 7: Interview: Understanding and Defending North Korea RESOURCE 8: Democracy: US vs DPRK – Towards the Annihilation of a Narrative RESOURCE 9: The secret genocide in South Korea you’ve probably never heard of SECTION 5: THE PEOPLE'S (SOCIALIST) REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 1: ALBANIA WAS A TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP RESOURCE 1: Pickaxe and Rifle: The Story of the Albanian People by William Ash RESOURCE 2: Insights into Socialist Albania from 'Pickaxe and Rifle'

“In the 20th Century, upwards of 100 million people have died as a result of Communism.”

At least, that’s what “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”, would have you believe. Written by a collection of staunch anti-socialists, the accuracy of the text begins to falter in the title alone. Communism has never been achieved, exactly zero people have died under Communist ‘regimes’, which is an oxymoron in itself, so they really dropped the ball on that one. There’s only so much value however, in discounting an entire 912 page text due to dialectical errors. There are quite a few other reasons to discount, which I will outline.

Academic institutions worldwide will emphasize the importance of establishing author’s intent when reading literature. As there are many authors, we will attribute the primary influences of this book to chief editor and compiler of works Stéphane Courtois. A French professor, it isn’t difficult to observe the hilarity of his outlandish well-known theses, including the sentiment that “Communism is a form of Totalitarianism” Totalitarianism being a system that governs in favor of the state, and Communism being a system where the state is defunct, being the simple retort, in addition the claim that “Lenin invented Totalitarianism” despite several totalitarian states predating his birth. These, paired with his laughably sub-clandestine infiltration into a leftist party for his ‘studies’, and a campaign suggest that Nazi concentration camps were adopted from the Soviet Union, a claim denied by the German government, make it plain to see his extremist and outlandish agenda.

And so it goes, Courtois was indeed paid by Éditions Robert Laffont, the premier French publishing house, to write a sensationalist anti-Communist text to follow in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. All said and done, his estimation of deaths under Communism comes out 94 million, including 65 million from China, and 20 million from the USSR. A large portion of such figures are deaths as a result of deportation, which is egregiously unreliable. That’s among the least of the sources for margin for error however. The single largest contributor to death, famine, is not only largely a result of drought and land degradation carried over from World War II; it is not only unreliable as a cause of death in many cases; it is not attributable to malicious intent and is not representative of empirical Socialism. What’s worse, all estimations are maximums, and yet, the Western propaganda machine shamelessly inflates the numbers even higher to the tune of ‘upwards of 100 million’ or ‘40 million in the USSR’. What’s even worse, these numbers aren’t actually in the original translation, “Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression”

Yes, the widely acclaimed ‘Black Book’ with it’s calculated toll of 94 million deaths was actually a result of a mistranslation by the English translator Mark Kramer.

“ My original translation of these passages used the European symbol for "per thousand" (as the French edition did), but evidently the typesetter wasn't accustomed to the symbol and read it as "percent" rather than "per thousand." I should have noticed the erroneous switch when I looked over the galley proofs.”

It happens that the translation is off, by about a factor of 10. When did knowledge of the mis-translation come about? 2001, only two years after the fact, and yet the media has decided to ignore it. The same media that prides itself on tenants such as “free press” and “freedom of thought” … “like the freedom to recommend chicken soup for AIDS instead of protease inhibitors,” is actually just a medium for liberal censorship and propaganda, though this shouldn’t be news to any of you. In this case, the cause of death for millions of people has been obscured, a great injustice to them.

So instead of 94 million, we have a comparatively paltry 9.4 million, which is still skewed by over-estimations, confounding, and unreliable data. 2 million from the USSR, 6.5 million from China. But wait, there’s more! Courtois also attempts to attribute deaths to ‘regimes’ such as: Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Eastern European Communist States, and Communist movements not in power. In the cases of North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Afghanistan, these could only realistically be combatant deaths, which are not traditionally attributable to regimental death tolls. In the case of Cambodia, he could only be implying that the Khmer Rouge were Communists, which is incorrect. In the case of Ethiopia, similarly questionable assumptions as Cambodia are present, in addition to the fact that the deaths were solely a result of uncontrollable famine. The non-soviet Eastern European countries come out to a calculated 100,000 in all, and assuming his cause for these numbers are construed from executions of political prisoners, it’s still outlandishly high, and inconsistent from even pessimistic and bias sources. As for Communist movements not in power, (1,000 deaths), these could only reasonably be reconciled by more combatant deaths in either the Phillipines or Thailand, in which the Capitalist were responsible for conflict and a greater amount of killing against the Communist movements. All considered, the number we are now left with, still not accounting for over-estimations, confounding, and unreliable data, is about 8.3 million.

Well, at this point we can call the data from the Soviet Union (~2 million) accurate, all of these exclusively under the administration of Josef Stalin. But with China, we have still more problems. The very bureaucracy that is blamed for the famines causing mass death, is also responsible for recording the nation’s census data. Unfortunately for the agenda of Courtois, the data doesn’t match up. The wake of the famines show population decline in only two provinces, Tibet and Gansu, and growth below projected in another 4 provinces. It would be stretching it, to claim that actual losses totaled even 2.2 million. We are now down to 4.2 million total. Of course, China itself claims that the deaths totaled 16 million. This is misleading however, because this claim was not only just an interpretation teased from the statements of a Chinese official by an Ansley J. Cole (and no other semi-credible source), but it is also interpreted from an official under Deng Xiaoping, a noted theoretical oppositionist to Mao Zedong, and a widely acknowledged corrupt, pro-capitalist figure. It would serve Deng Xiaoping’s interests to exaggerate the tremors of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and doing so repeatedly caused widespread protest by the people of China.

At the very least, confounding and and unreliable data can account for another 200,000 of the overestimation, so we are left with a final figure. Between 2 and 4 million total were killed under the ‘regimes’ of ‘Communist’ China and the USSR. Almost all in China and more than half in the USSR were the result of famine, leaving actual, intentional and malicious death to a figure likely under 1 million, a figure regularly eclipsed by single atrocities perpetuated by the Capitalist Imperial Machine.

Knowing this, false figures are still perpetuated by the media, by the institution of education, and by the simple widespread anti-Socialist hysteria that is the ignorant social masses. Each of these constructs could use full reformation beyond the reasons implied by this piece alone. In every instance of Socialism becoming the ruling doctrine of any state, life expectancy has increased sizably, as has UN affiliated NGOs’ indexes of life satisfaction. Socialism will prolong your life, Capitalism will squeeze it out of you. Based on the lengths to which the pro-capitalists have gone to obscure this truth, that should be even more abundantly clear.

When you know that you cannot win the argument so you block the person and type crappy insults on their talk page (Insert smiley with sunglasses here)
 * That would imply a conversation, one that has not actually occurred. Anyone can read your posts, if they have the time and energy to sift through your screeds. I would also advise you to look up what a Gish-gallop is, since that seems to be your primary method of communication. 16:03, 20 December 2018 (UTC)