Facts about communism

April 13, 2012 | In: History facts

The 20th century was the bloodiest in history. Two major forces were responsible for the tens of millions of people killed throughout a period of 60-70 years: The Nazis and the Communists. Today we’ll talk about the latter.

The communist system was founded in Ancient Greece. Plato, in his Republic, outlined a society with communal holding of property. The year 1848 was also marked by the appearance of The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the primary exposition of the socioeconomic doctrine that came to be known as Marxism.

A major discussion appearing in almost every political argumentation is whether or not the Communism was the biggest murderer of all time. For that, let’s see some numbers:

• 65 million in the People’s Republic of China
• 20 million in the Soviet Union[3]
• 2 million in Cambodia
• 2 million in North Korea
• 1.7 million in Africa
• 1.5 million in Afghanistan
• 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
• 1 million in Vietnam[4]
• 150,000 in Latin America

These numbers were taken form The Black book of Communism, which I strongly suggest that you read when you grow up. The editor Stéphane Courtois cites a death toll of 94 million people. Courtois claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor.

The communist parties all over the world used many forms of repression in their countries, because the people didn’t want a totalitarian leader. Probably the bloodiest communist ruler of all time was Joseph Stalin. Repressions, executions and famine were usual things for him. He thought that non-communist people deserve to die. These are just few things that Stalin ordered:

• The executions of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922;
• The Russian famine of 1921, which caused the death of 5 million people;
• The murder of tens of thousands in concentration camps in the period 1918–1930;
• The Great Purge which killed almost 690,000 people;
• The deportation of 2 million so-called “kulaks”, mainly farmers, from 1930 to 1932;
• The deaths of 4 million Ukrainians (Holodomor) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933;
• The deportations of Poles, Ukrainians, Moldavians and people from the Baltic Republics from 1939 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1945;
• The deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1943;
• The deportation of the Chechens in 1944.

The main difference between the Nazis and Communist was put in terms of hate. One hated the race, the other, the class. These are two very big mistakes. You simply cannot judge anyone by their skin color or their social class.

The USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republics) that one time numbered 23 countries, fell in two years (1989-1991) all over Europe. But, nowadays we still can find communist countries. The last 5 in the world are: China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea.

Although wars will always exist, human kind should never forget what totalitarian regimes were, and are responsible for. That being said, I simply just want to think about all the people that were maltreated and killed just a few decades ago. Was is worth it?!