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Criticisms of communist regimes have often centered around accusations of human rights violations that occurred under Communist rule, particularly under the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China. Criticisms often attribute deaths due to executions, forced labor camps, and mass starvations to Communist party rule and feature prominently overall in criticisms of communism as an ideology and political movement.

Communist regimes have been a source of controversy for decades, and their policies have generated lengthy and heated debates. Perhaps more than any other 20th century governments, Communist states have had a very polarizing effect on observers, drawing enthusiastic support as well as vehement criticism. Supporters and opponents have argued over the performance of Communist states on such issues as economic development, human rights, foreign policy, scientific progress and environmental degradation.

Contents

[edit] Political repression

Extensive historical research, especially after the fall of Communism opened the archives of many of the former Communist states, has documented the large scale human rights violations that occurred in these states. Several of the most prominent researchers are former communists who become disillusioned with the Communist system they had powerful positions in, like Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev and Dmitri Volkogonov, or after they started their research, like several of the authors of The Black Book of Communism. Robert Conquest, another former communist, was one of the first to document the Great Purge in his book The Great Terror and was vehemently criticized for this by many Western intellectuals. He was vindicated when the achieves were opened. Jung Chang, one of the authors of Mao: The Unknown Story, was a Red Guard in her youth.

The level of repression varied widely between different states and historical periods. The most rigid censorship has been practiced by hardline Stalinist and Maoist regimes, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin (1927-53), China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and North Korea during its entire existence (1948-present). Most prominent are deaths due to executions, forced labor camps, genocides of certain ethnic minorities, and mass starvations caused by either government mismanagement or deliberately. Some particularly brutal episodes were the Holodomor, the Great Purge, the Great Leap Forward, and The Killing Fields.

Although Stalin's regime was responsible for a greater number of deaths, the repressions started immediately after the Russian revolution during the regime of Lenin. His regime summarily executed hundreds of thousands of "class enemies", created the Cheka, created the system that later become the Gulags, and was responsible for a policy of food requisitioning during the Russian Civil War that was partially responsible for a famine causing 3-10 million deaths. <ref>Pipes, Richard (1990) The Russian Revolution 1899-1919. Collins Harvill. ISBN 0679400745. Pipes, Richard (1994) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0679761845. Pipes, 1994. Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087. Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.Russian Civil War. Historical Atlas of the 20th Century. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.The Soviet Famines of 1921 and 1932-3. Retrieved on October 02, 2005.Lenin and the First Communist Revolutions, VII. Museum of Communism. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.</ref>

Yakovlev is especially critical of the treatment of millions of children of claimed political opponents. Children of former Imperial officers and peasants were held as hostages and sometimes shot during the Russian Civil War. The children of soldiers who surrendered during WWII could be punished. Some children followed their parents to the Gulags, where their mortality rate was especially high. In 1954 there were 884,057 "specially resettled" children under the age of sixteen. Others were placed in special orphanages run by the secret police in order to be reeducated, often losing even their names, and were considered socially dangerous also as adults.<ref>Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220. p. 29-47</ref>

An extensive network of civilian informants - either volunteers, or those forcibly recruited - was used to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of dissent.[1] Some Communist states classified internal critics of the system as having a mental disease, such as sluggishly progressing schizophrenia - which was only recognized in Communist states - and incarcerated them in mental hospitals.[2] Workers were not allowed to join free trade unions.[3] Several internal uprisings were suppressed by military force, like the Tambov rebellion, the Kronstadt rebellion, and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Both anti-Communists and Communists have criticized the personality cults of many leaders of Communist states, and the hereditary leadership of North Korea and (planned) Cuba. The dissenting communist Milovan Djilas and others have also argued that a powerful new class of party bureaucrats emerged under Communist Party rule, and exploited the rest of the population.(see also nomenklatura)

[edit] Responses

Each side in the debate between communism and capitalism claims to offer "freedom" while accusing the other side of being a "tyranny". One way of looking at this question would be to look at the freedoms under a system of liberal democracy and communism. The Soviet Union, an example of a communist state, abridged such liberties as the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and sometimes equality before the law. Communist critics, on the other hand, argue that freedoms in these "bourgeois democracies" are not egalitarian, and that in reality, they are only available to be enforced for the economically powerful.

The Communist states themselves, as well as their advocates, often argue that censorship and similar restrictions are unfortunate but necessary. Usually, newly established Communist states maintained or tightened the level of censorship that was present in those countries before the Communists came to power; indeed, the Communists themselves had most often been the targets of this previous censorship. As a result, after coming to power, they argued that they wanted to fight the former ruling class using its own weapons, in order to prevent it from staging a counter-revolution. Later, during the Cold War, Communist states were assaulted by capitalist propaganda from outside and infiltrated by the intelligence agencies of powerful capitalist nations, such as the CIA. In this view, restrictions and suppression of dissent were defensive measures against subversion.

Some have argued that, while censorship was practiced in Communist states, the extent of this censorship has been greatly exaggerated in the West. Albert Szymanski, for instance, draws a comparison between the treatment of anti-Communist dissidents in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death and the treatment of anti-capitalist dissidents in the United States during the age of McCarthyism, claiming that "on the whole, it appears that the level of repression in the Soviet Union in the 1955 to 1980 period was at approximately the same level as in the US during the McCarthy years (1947-56)."[4] Note that this claim was made in 1984 before the opening of the Soviet archives which later scholars have used. Amnesty International estimated the number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union in 1979 at a little over 400.[5]

[edit] Emigration

Critics argue that emigration from Communist States is evidence of dissatisfaction within those regimes. Between 1950 and 1961 2.75 million East Germans moved to West Germany. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 around 200,000 people moved to Austria as the Hungarian-Austrian border temporarily opened. From 1948 to 1953 hundreds of thousands of North Koreans moved to the South, stopped only when emigration was clamped down after the Korean War. After the Chinese conquest of Tibet, Chinese demographers estimated 90,000 Tibetans moved into exile. In Cuba 50,000 members of the middle class left between 1959-1961 after Fidel Castro seized power. An even larger exodus occurred during the Mariel Boatlift, and many Cubans continue attempts to emigrate to the U.S. as of 2006. After the communist victory in Vietnam over a million people left by sea, the Boat People during the 1970s and 1980s. Another large group of refugees left Cambodia and Laos, the latter lost most of its educated elite and 10% of its population.[citation needed]

Restrictions on emigration from Communist states received extensive publicity. The Berlin wall was one of the most famous examples of this, but North Korea still imposes a total ban on emigration (reported on PBS's program Frontline) and Cuba's restrictions are routinely criticized by the Cuban-American community. During the Berlin Wall's existence, sixty thousand people unsuccessfully attempted to emigrate illegally from East Germany and received jail terms for attempting to "flee the Republic"; there were around five thousand successful escapes into West Berlin; and 239 people were killed trying to cross.[6]

[edit] Responses

Image:Berlin Wall graffiti and death strip.jpg

Restrictions to emigration have been in force in many countries Szymanski considered capitalist prior to the late 19th century. France, Spain and Portugal even limited their citizens' travel to their own colonies.[7] The various German principalities allowed only emigration to slavic lands in the east prior to the 18th century, and many of them banned emigration altogether from the 18th century to the mid-19th. Austrian authorities did not allow commoners to move beyond the empire's borders before the 1850s. While most European states relaxed or even completely eliminated their restrictions on emigration by the early 20th century - largely due to their population explosion - there were some exceptions. Romania, Serbia, and, most notably, Tsarist Russia still required their citizens to obtain official permission for emigration up to World War I. During the war, all European countries re-introduced strict restrictions on migration, either temporarily or permanently.[8] Critics find fault with this logic, noting that future non-Communist nations (as in parts of the Austrian Empire and Germany) located in the above areas did not have similar stringent emigration policies during the Cold War while Communist nations did.

The restrictions imposed by Communist states on the emigration of their citizens were no more intense than such restrictions that had been imposed by capitalist (or otherwise non-Communist) countries in the past. In Poland, for example, the Communist government maintained the same emigration laws that had been in force in capitalist Poland from 1936.[9] However, Communist states (particularly East Germany, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea) did regulate emigration to a greater degree than most Western capitalist countries in the post-World War II period. The reason given for this was that they needed as much labour as possible for post-war reconstruction and economic development.[10] They did not deny that better standards of living existed in other countries, but argued that they were in the process of catching up, however 60 years after World War II North Korea and Cuba have only gone backwards, while East Germany has accepted the capitalist ideals of the West, for the most part.

Of the Communist states, only Albania and North Korea ever imposed a blanket ban on emigration. From most other Communist states, legal emigration was always possible, though often so difficult that attempted emigrants would risk their lives in order to emigrate. Some of these states relaxed emigration laws significantly from the 1960s onwards. Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens emigrated legally every year during the 1970s.[11]

[edit] Imperialism

The Communist states were founded on a policy of militant anti-imperialism. Lenin believed imperialism to be "the highest stage of capitalism" and, in 1917, he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and secession for the national minorities of Russia. Later, during the Cold War, Communist states gave military assistance and in some cases intervened directly on behalf of national liberation movements that were fighting for independence from colonial empires, particularly in Asia and Africa.

However, critics have accused the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China of being imperialistic themselves, and have therefore concluded that their foreign policy was hypocritical (sometimes imperialist and sometimes anti-imperialist, depending on their interests in a given situation). Specifically, the Soviet Union attacked and re-integrated the newly independent nations of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War.[12] Stalin conquered the Baltic states in World War II and created satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. After the revolution, China re-conquered Tibet, which had been part of the previous Chinese empire in the Qing dynasty. Soviet forces intervened on 3 occasions against anti-Soviet uprisings or governments in other countries: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

[edit] World War II

According to the historian Richard Pipes, the Communist states share some responsibility for World War II. Both Hitler and Mussolini used the Soviet Union as a model for their own totalitarian states and Hitler privately expressed that Stalin was a "genius". In turn, Stalin expressed desire for another great war that would leave his enemies weakened and allow Soviet expansion. He allowed the testing and production of German weapons that were forbidden by the Versailles Treaty to occur on Soviet territory. During the critical 1932 German elections, he forbid the German Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats. These parties together gained more votes than Hitler and could have prevented him from becoming Chancellor.<ref>Pipes, Richard (2001) Communism Weidenfled and Nicoloson. ISBN 0297646885 p. 74-76, 96, 103-109</ref>

[edit] Terrorism

Some Communist states directly supported claimed terrorist groups. Examples include the PFLP, the Red Army Fraction, and the Japanese Red Army.<ref> Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087. Chapter 18></ref> North Korea has been implicated in terrorist acts such as Korean Air Flight 858.

[edit] Loss of life

The most severe accusations made against Communist states is that they were responsible for over one hundred millions deaths. The vast majority of these deaths are held to have occurred under the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. As such, most critics focus on those two regimes in particular, though others have claimed that all Communist states were responsible for some numbers of unjust deaths. These deaths generally fall under two categories:

  1. Executions of people who had received the death penalty for various charges, or deaths that occurred in prison.
  2. Deaths that were not caused directly by the government (the people in question were not executed and did not die in prison), but are considered to be the deliberate or accidental results of certain government policies. Most of the claimed victims of Communist states fall under this category, and it is this category that is usually the subject of controversy.

Most Communist states held the death penalty as a legal form of punishment for most of their existence, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Soviet Union abolished it from 1947 to 1950 [13][14]). Critics argue that many, perhaps most, of the convicted prisoners executed by Communist states were not criminals, but political dissidents. Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s (roughly 1936-38) is given as the most prominent example of this.[15]

A number of Communist states also held forced labour as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time, and, again, critics argue that the majority of those sentenced to forced labour camps - such as the Gulag - were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons. Some of the Gulag camps were located in very harsh environments, such as Siberia, which resulted in the death of a significant fraction of their inmates before they could complete their prison terms. Officially, the Gulag was shut down in 1960.

With regard to deaths not caused directly by government orders, critics usually point to famine and war as the immediate causes of what they see as unjust deaths in Communist states. The Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward are considered to have been man-made famines. These two events alone killed a majority of the people seen as victims of Communist states by nearly all estimates.

[edit] Estimated Total Deaths

Many historians have attempted to give estimates of the total number of people killed by a certain Communist state, or by all Communist states put together. The question is complicated by the lack of hard data and by biases of those offering death toll estimates.

The number of people killed under Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union has been estimated as between 3.5 and 8 million by G. Ponton[16], 6.6 million by V. V. Tsaplin[17], 9.5 million by Alec Nove[18], 20 million by The Black Book of Communism[19], 50 million by Norman Davies[20], and 61 million by R. J. Rummel[21].

The number of people killed under Mao Zedong's regime in the People's Republic of China has been estimated at 19.5 million by Wang Weizhi[22], 27 million by John Heidenrich[23], between 38 and 67 million by Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony[24], between 32 and 59 million by Robert L. Walker[25], 65 million by The Black Book of Communism[26], and 77 million by R.J. Rummel[27].

The authors of The Black Book of Communism have also estimated that 9.3 million people have died as a result of the actions of other Communist states and leaders, distributed as follows: 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Eastern Europe, and 150,000 in Latin America.[28] R.J. Rummel has estimated that 1.6 million died in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, and 2.5 million in Poland and Yugoslavia.[29]

Between the authors Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glaser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin, and Nove, the communists states of Stalin's Soviet Russia and Mao's China have an estimated total death rate ranging from 23 million to 109 million.

The Black Book of Communism finds that roughly 94 million died under all Communist states while Rummel believes around 144.7 million died under six Communist states. From a collection of the sources listed above, Matthew White also attempts to compose a total figure in his Historical Atlas of the 20th century[30], and arrives at the figure of 92 million.

According to what is available here, these are the three highest numbers of victims blamed on Communism by any historian. However, it should be noted that the totals that include research by Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glasser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin, and Nove do not include other periods of time beyond Stalin or Mao's rule, thus it is possible, when including other communist regimes, to reach higher totals.

The number of South Vietnamese people estimated to have been murdered in re-education camps after the fall of Saigon is approximately 850,000 people.

In its resolution (January 25th, 2006) condemning the crimes of all communist states, the Council of Europe considered the number to be 94 million , but, again, this was based on estimates from a controversial book "The Black Book of Communism", not a peer-reviewed historical study.

[edit] Reasons for Discrepancies

The reasons for such extreme discrepancies in the number of estimated victims of Communist states are twofold:

  • First, all these numbers are estimates derived from incomplete data. Researchers often have to extrapolate and interpret available information in order to arrive at their final numbers.
  • Second, different researchers work with different definitions of what it means to be killed by one's government. As noted above, the vast majority of alleged victims of Communist states did not die as a result of direct government orders, but rather by policy, so there is no agreement on the question of whether Communist governments should be held responsible for their deaths. The low estimates may count only executions and labour camp deaths as instances of government killing, while the high estimates may be based on the assumption that the government killed everyone who died from famine, war, or is unaccounted for.
  • Some of the writers make special distinction for Stalin and Mao, who all agree are responsible for the most crimes against humanity, but include little to no statistics on losses of life after their rule.
  • Finally, this is a highly politically charged field, with nearly all researchers having been accused of a pro- or anti-Communist bias at one time or another.

Some have argued that it is unfair to judge Communist states more harshly than other regimes on issues such as famine, because large numbers of people still die from hunger all over the world. For instance, some have estimated that hunger currently kills 24 thousand people daily.[31] Some critics argue that deaths from famine are the responsibility of the government, because their policies created an economic environment incapable of reacting to such natural disasters (for example in the Ukraine under Stalin, grain was exported by the government while people starved).

[edit] Economic development

Estimates of national income (GNP) growth in the Soviet Union, 1928 - 1985 (source: [32])
Khanin Bergeson/CIA TsSu
1928-1980 3.3 4.3 8.8
1928-1941 2.9 5.8 13.9
1950s 6.9 6.0 10.1
1960s 4.2 5.2 7.1
1970s 2.0 3.7 5.3
1980-85 0.6 2.0 3.2

Both critics and supporters of Communist states often make comparisons between particular Communist and capitalist countries, with the intention of showing that one side was superior to the other. All such comparisons are open to challenge, both on the comparability of the states involved and the statistic being used for comparison. No two countries are identical which make comparions regarding later economic development difficult; Western Europe was more developed and industrialized than Eastern Europe long before the Cold War; WWII damaged the economy more is some nations than in others; East Germany had much of its industry taken by the USSR for war reparations.

Advocates of central economic planning claim that it has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, including rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union, especially during the 1930s. Another example is the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba. New research shows that the Soviet figures were partly fabricated, especially those showing extremely high growth in the Stalin era. Growth was impressive in 1950s and 1960s but later declined and according to some estimates became negative in the late eighties.<ref>Steele, Charles N (2002). "The Soviet Experiment: Lessons for Development". in Morris, J.(ed.), Sustainable Development. Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty? (London, Profile Book. Brainerd, Elizabeth (2002). "Reassessing The standard of living in the Soviet Union: an analysis using archival and anthropometric data". Abram Bergson Memorial Conference, Harvard University, Davis Center, November 23–24. </ref> Before the collectivization, Russia had been the "breadbasket of Europe," supplying 40% of the world’s wheat exports in the bumper years 1909 and 1910. The Soviet Union became a net importer of grain, unable to produce enough food to feed its own population.<ref>Horowitz, David (2000). The Politics of Bad Faith. Touchstone Books. ISBN 0684850230.</ref>

China and Vietnam achieved much higher rates of growth after introducing capitalist economic reforms and the higher growth rates was accompanied by declining poverty.<ref>Wand, Xiaolu, and Lian Meng (2001). "A Reevaluation of China's Economic Growth". China Economic Review 12(4): 338–346.Dollar, David (2002). "Reform, growth, and poverty in Vietnam, Volume 1".

Policy, Research working paper series ; no. WPS 2837. Development Research Group, World Bank. </ref> The Communist states do not compare favorable when looking at divided nations with similar culture before the Communist takeovers: North Korea vs. South Korea; China vs. Hong Kong and Taiwan; and East Germany vs. West Germany. East vs. West German productivity was around 90% in 1936 and around 60-65% in 1954. When compared to the EU, the East German productivity declined from 67% in 1950 to 50% before the unification in 1989. All the Eastern European nations had productivity far below the EU average.<ref>Sleifer, Japp (1999). "Separated Unity: The East and West German Industrial Sector in 1936". Research Memorandum GD-46. Groningen Growth and Development Centre.

Sleifer, Japp (2002). "A Benchmark Comparison of East and West German Industrial Labour Productivity in 1954". Research Memorandum GD-57. Groningen Growth and Development Centre. Ark, Bart van (1999). "Economic Growth and Labour Productivity In Europe: Half a Century of East-West Comparisons". Research Memorandum GD-41. Groningen Growth and Development Centre. </ref>

Nevertheless, some Communist states with planned economies maintained consistently higher rates of economic growth than industrialized Western capitalist countries. From 1928 to 1985, the economy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10, and GNP per capita grew more than fivefold.[33] The Soviet economy started out at roughly 25% the size of the economy of the United States. By 1955, it climbed to 40%. In 1965 the Soviet economy reached 50% of the contemporary US economy, and in 1977 it passed the 60% threshold.[34] For the first half of the Cold War, most economists were asking when, not if, the Soviet economy would overtake the US economy.[35] Starting in the 1970s, however, and particularly during the 1980s, growth rates slowed down in the Soviet Union and throughout the Communist world. The reasons for this downturn are still a matter of debate among economists, but one theory is that the Communist states had reached the limits of the extensive growth model they were pursuing, and the downturn was at least in part caused by their refusal or inability to switch to intensive growth.[36] Further, it could be argued that since the communist economies of countries like Russia began as pre-industrial, the high economic growth rate could be attributed to industrialization. Also, high growth rates were often accompanied by intense suffering in the form of starvation on the part of a communist state's citizens.

Unlike the slow transition in China and Vietnam, the abrupt end to central planning was followed by a depression in many of the states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For example, in the Russian Federation GDP/capita decreased by one-third between 1989 and 1996. As of 2003, all of them have positive economic growth and almost all have a higher GDP/capita than before the transition.<ref>2004. World Development Indicators 2004 online. Development Data Group, The World Bank. From the World Resources Institute. Retrieved on October 7, 2005.</ref>

Yearly economic growth record
of the Soviet Union (source: [37])
GNP GNP
per capita
Annual rate for
the period 1928-1980 		4.4% 3.1%
Annual rate for
the period 1950-1980		 4.7% 3.3%
Annual rate for
the period 1960-1980		 4.2% 3.1%
Annual rate for
the period 1970-1980		 3.1% 2.1%

In general, critics of Communist states argue that they remained behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development for most of their existence, while advocates argue that growth rates were sometimes higher in Communist states than in capitalist countries, so they would have eventually caught up to the West if those growth rates had been maintained. Some reject all comparisons altogether, noting that the Communist states started out with economies that were much less developed to begin with, though this was not always the case.[38]

[edit] Social development

Most Communist states chose to concentrate their economic resources on heavy industry and defense while largely neglecting consumer goods. This is one expalantions for that the standards of living in the majority of Communist states were consistently below those experienced in the industrialized West, even when their economic growth was comparable or higher.

Supporters of the Communist states note the social and cultural programs, sometimes administered by labor organizations. They included in theory guaranteed employment, subsidized food and clothing, free health care, free child care, and free education. Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union.<ref>Massell, Gregory J. (1974). The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929. Princeton University Press. ISBN 069107562X.</ref> They point out to the claimed high levels of literacy enjoyed by Eastern Europeans (in comparison, for instance, with Southern Europe), Cubans or Chinese.

However, again the Communist parts of the divided nations do not compare favorably. Millions died in famines in Communist China and North Korea.<ref>*Chang, Jung & Halliday, Jon (2005) Mao: The Unknown Story. Knopf. ISBN 0679422714

Cuba is often cited as a successful example by communists. However, Cuba was one of most developed nations in Latin America before Castro. Other Latin American nations have seen greater increases in literacy than Cuba. Calories per person have declined in Cuba while it has increased in most other Latin American nations. Cubans eat less cereals and meat than before Castro.<ref>Zenith and Eclipse: A Comparative Look at Socio-Economic Conditions in Pre-Castro and Present Day Cuba. Released by the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, February 9, 1998. Revised June 2002. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.</ref> On the other hand, there is a United States embargo against Cuba.

After 1965, life expectancy began to plateau or even decreased, especially for males, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe while it continued to increase in Western Europe. This divergence between two parts of Europe went on during three decades leading to a profound gap in the mid 90s. The life expectancy sharply declined after the change to market economy in several of the states of the former Soviet Union but may now have started to increase in the Baltic states. In several Eastern European nations life expectancy started to increase immediately after the fall of Communism. The previous decline for males continued for a time in some, like Romania, before starting to increase.<ref>Meslé, France (2002). "Mortality in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union long-term trends and recent upturns". Paper presented at IUSSP/MPIDR Workshop "Determinants of Diverging Trends in Mortality" Rostock, June 19-21 2002. Institut national d’études démographiques, Paris. </ref>

In the Soviet Union in 1989 there was rationing of meat and sugar. The average intake of red meat for a Soviet citizen was half of what it had been for a subject of the Czar in 1913. Blacks in apartheid South Africa owned more cars per capita. The only area of consumption in which the Soviets excelled was the ingestion of hard liquor. Two-thirds of the households had no hot water, and a third had no running water at all. According to the government paper, Izvestia, a typical working class family of four was forced to live for 8 years in a single 8x8 foot room, before marginally better accommodation became available. The housing shortage was so acute that at all times 17% of Soviet families had to be physically separated for want of adequate space. A third of the hospitals had no running water and the bribery of doctors and nurses to get decent medical attention and even amenities like blankets in Soviet hospitals was not only common, but routine. Only 15 percent of Soviet youth were able to attend institutions of higher learning compared to 34 percent in the U.S. The average welfare mother in the United States received more income in a month, than the average Soviet worker could earn in a year.<ref>Horowitz, David (2000). The Politics of Bad Faith. Touchstone Books. ISBN 0684850230.</ref>

Yearly economic growth compared
(source: [39])
Soviet
Union 		Western
Europe 		United
States
Annual GNP
growth rate: 1950-1980		 4.7% 4.2% 3.3%
Annual GNP
growth rate: 1970-1980		 3.1% 3.0% 3.0%
Annual GNP per capita
growth rate: 1950-1980		 3.3% 3.3% 1.9%
Annual GNP per capita
growth rate: 1970-1980		 2.1% 2.3% 2.0%

[edit] Arts, science, and technology

Many Communist states censored the arts for significant periods of time, usually giving preferential treatment to socialist realism. Some Communist states have engaged in large-scale cultural experiments. In Romania, the historical center of Bucharest was demolished and the whole city was redesigned between 1977 and 1989. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of churches were demolished or converted to secular purposes during the 1920s and 30s. In China, the Cultural Revolution sought to give all artistic expression a 'proletarian' content and destroyed much older material lacking this.[40] Critics argue that such policies represented unjustified destruction of cultural heritage, while advocates claim that the new culture they created was better than the old.

During the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union, historical documents were often the subject of revisionism and forgery, intended to change public perception of certain important people and events. The pivotal role played by Leon Trotsky in the Russian revolution and Civil War, for example, was almost entirely erased from official historical records after Trotsky became the leader of a communist faction that opposed Stalin's rule (see Fourth International).

The emphasis on the "hard sciences" produced mixed results.<ref> A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 16. Science and Techology. The Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved on October 5, 2005.</ref> There were very few Nobel Prize winners from Communist states.<ref>Jank, Wolfgand, Bruce L. Golden, Paul F. Zantek (2004). "Old World vs. New World: Evolution of Nobel Prize Shares". University of Maryland. </ref>

Soviet research in certain sciences was at times guided by political rather than scientific considerations. Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory were promoted for brief periods of time in biology and linguistics respectively, despite having no scientific merit. Research into genetics was restricted, because Nazi use of eugenics had prompted the Soviet Union to label genetics a "fascist science". Research was also suppressed in cybernetics, psychology and psychiatry, and even organic chemistry.(see suppressed research in the Soviet Union).

Soviet technology in many sectors lagged Western technology. Exceptions include areas like the Soviet space program and military technology where occasionally the Communist technology was more advanced due to a massive concentration of research resources. According to the CIA, much of the technology in the Communist states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program. Stricter Western control of the export of technology through COCOM and providing defective technology to Communist agents after the discovery of the Farewell Dossier contributed to the fall of Communism.<ref>Davis, Christopher (2000). "The Defence Sector in the Economy of a Declining Superpower: Soviet Union and Russia, 1965-2000". Forthcoming Article in the Journal Defence and Peace Economics Draft (8/6/00). University of Oxford. A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 16. Science and Techology. The Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved on October 4, 2005. Weiss, Gus W (1996). "The Farewell Dossier". CIA. </ref>

[edit] Environment

According to the United States Department of Energy, the Communist states maintained a much higher level of energy intensity than either the Western nations or the Third World, at least after 1970. Energy-intensive development may have been reasonable. The Soviet Union was an exporter of oil; China has vast supplies of coal.

Also pointed out is the environmental disasters. One is the gradual disappearance of the Aral Sea and a similar diminishing of the Caspian Sea because of the diversion of the rivers that fed them. Another the pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the unique freshwater environment of Lake Baikal. Many of the rivers were polluted; several, like the Vistula and Oder rivers in Poland, were virtually ecologically dead. Over 70% of the surface water in the Soviet Union was polluted. In 1988 only 30% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution was exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in the Soviet Union in 1988. The air pollution problem was even more severe in Eastern Europe. It caused a rapid growth in lung cancer, forest die-back, and damage to buildings and cultural heritages. According to official sources, 58 percent of total agricultural land of the former Soviet Union was affected by salinization, erosion, acidity, or waterlogging. Nuclear waste was dumped in the Sea of Japan, the Arctic Ocean, and in locations in the Far East. It was revealed in 1992 that in the city of Moscow there were 636 radioactive toxic waste sites and 1,500 in St. Petersburg.<ref> Díaz-Briquets, Sergio, and Jorge Pérez-López (1998). "Socialism and Environmental Disruption: Implications for Cuba". Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy 8: 154–172.</ref><ref> Steele, 2002.</ref>

Some see the aforementioned examples of environmental degradation are similar to what occurred in Western capitalist countries during the height of their drive to industrialize, in the 19th century.[41] (See also the Kuznets curve.) Others claim that Communist states did more damage than average, primarily due to the lack of any popular or political pressure to research environmentally friendly technologies.[42]

Some ecological problems continue unabated after the fall of the Soviet Union and are still major issues today - which has prompted supporters of Communist states to accuse their opponents of holding a double standard.[43] However, other environmental problems has improved in every studied former Communist state.<ref> Environmental Performance Reviews Programme. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Russia. OECD. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.Kahn, Matthew E (2002). "Has Communism’s Collapse Greened Eastern Europe’s Polluted Cities?". Paper written for the NBER Environmental Conference on Advances in Empirical Environmental Policy Research May 17th 2002. </ref> Some researchers have argued that part of improvement was largely due to the severe economic downturns in the 1990s that caused many factories to close down.[44]

[edit] Communist and Left criticism of 20th century Communist states

Communist states are nominally based on Marxism-Leninism, which is only one form of Marxism, which is in turn only one school of the Left. Many communists themselves disagree with some or most of the actions undertaken by Communist states during the 20th century. Many of the anti-communist criticisms presented in the above section (for example, criticisms of violations of human rights) are shared by the communist critics.

Varieties of the Left opposed Bolshevik plans before they were put into practice: The revisionist Marxists, such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky denied the necessity of a revolution. Anarchists (who had differed from Marx and his followers since the split in the First International), many of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the Marxist Mensheviks supported the overthrow of the Tsar, but vigorously opposed the seizure of power by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Criticisms of Communist states from the Left continued after the creation of the first such state. The anarchist Nestor Makhno led an insurrection against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan tried to assassinate Lenin. Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920, and regarded the Bolsheviks as intelligent, but clueless and planless. In her book about Soviet Russia after the revolution, My Further Disillusionment in Russia, Emma Goldman condemned the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion as a 'massacre'.

After the split between Trotsky and Stalin, Trotskyists have argued that Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a bureaucratic and repressive state, and that all subsequent Communist states ultimately turned out similar because they copied his example (Stalinism). There are various terms used by Trotskyists to define such states; see state capitalism, degenerated workers' state and deformed workers' state. While Trotskyists are Leninists, there are other communists who embrace classical Marxism and reject Leninism entirely, arguing, for example, that the Leninist principle of democratic centralism was the source of the Soviet Union's slide away from communism.

Communists agree that democracy (the rule of the people) is a key element of both socialism and communism - though they may disagree on the particular form that this democracy should take and who "the people" are. The leaders of the Communist states themselves frequently announced their support for democracy, held regular elections and sometimes even gave their countries names such as the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Supporters of Communist states have always argued that those states were democratic. However, critics point out that, in practice, one political party held an absolute monopoly on power, dissent was banned, and the elections usually featured a single candidate and were ripe with fraud (often producing implausible results of 99% in favor of the candidate). Thus, communist critics of Communist states argue that, in practice, these states were not democratic and therefore not communist or socialist.

A lack of democracy implies a lack of a mandate from the people; as such, communist critics argue that the leadership of Communist states did not represent the interests of the working class, and it should therefore be no wonder that this leadership took actions that directly harmed the workers (for example Mao's Great Leap Forward). In particular, Communist states banned independent labor unions, an act seen by many communists (and most others on the political left) as an open betrayal of the working class.

Finally, it should be noted that many of these communist criticisms draw counter-criticisms from anti-communists, many of whom have attempted to establish a direct link between communist principles and the actions of Communist states. Ultimately, this comes down to a fundamental disagreement between communists and anti-communists as to what those 'communist principles' actually are. A glaring example is the issue of democracy: Communists claim that democracy is an essential part of their principles, while anti-communists claim that it is not. This partly due to the fact that Marx and Engels gave few detail regarding how the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the transitory state phase before the stateless and classless communist society, which the Communist states claimed to be, should be organized. See Criticisms of Marxism.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ↑  A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 9 - Mass Media and the Arts. The Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved on October 03, 2005.
  2. ↑  Koehler, John O. (2000). Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3744-5.
  3. ↑  The Soviet Case: Prelude to a Global Consensus on Psychiatry and Human Rights. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved on October 3, 2005.
  4. ↑  A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 5. Trade Unions. The Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved on October 4, 2005.
  5. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, Human Rights in the Soviet Union, 1984, p. 291
  6. ↑  New York Times, 30 April 1980, p. 6
  7. ↑  A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall. Retrieved on October 25, 2005.
  8. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, p. 15
  9. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, p. 16
  10. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, p. 19
  11. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, p. 22-25
  12. ↑  Bibliography: Szymanski, p. 21
  13. ↑  Bibliography: Pipes, 1994. p. 141-166
  14. ↑  On the Abolition of the Death Penalty. Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 26 May 1947. Retrieved on January 8, 2006.
  15. ↑  On the Employment of the Death Penalty to Traitors of the Motherland, Spies, and Saboteur-Subversives. Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 12 January 1950. Retrieved on January 8, 2006.
  16. ↑  Bibliography: Pipes, 2001. p. 66-67
  17. ↑  Ponton, G. (1994) The Soviet Era.
  18. ↑  Tsaplin, V.V. (1989) Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody.
  19. ↑  Nove, Alec. Victims of Stalinism: How Many?, in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning), Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8.
  20. ↑  Bibliography: Courtois, 1999. Introduction
  21. ↑  Davies, Norman. Europe: A History, Harper Perennial, 1998. ISBN 0-06-097468-0.
  22. ↑  Bibliography: Rummel.
  23. ↑  Weizhi, Wang. Contemporary Chinese Population, 1988.
  24. ↑  Heidenrich, John. How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen, Praeger Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-275-96987-8.
  25. ↑  Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony. Victims of politics: The state of human rights, Columbia University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-231-04442-9.
  26. ↑  Walker, Robert L. The Human Cost of Communism in China, report to the US Senate Committee of the Judiciary, 1971.
  27. ↑  Bibliography: Courtois, 1999. Introduction
  28. ↑  Bibliography: Rummel.
  29. ↑  Bibliography: Courtois, 1999. Introduction
  30. ↑  Death by Government. R.J. Rummel. Retrieved on January 18, 2006.
  31. ↑  Historical Atlas of the 20th century. Matthew White's homepage. Retrieved on January 18, 2006.
  32. ↑  Mission Network News. Gospel Communications Network. Retrieved on January 17, 2006.
  33. ↑  Reevaluating Colonial Democide. Democratic Peace papers. Retrieved on January 17, 2006.
  34. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. page 15.
  35. ↑  Massell, Gregory J. The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia: 1919–1929, Princeton University Press, 1974. ISBN 0-691-07562-X.
  36. ↑  Wand, Xiaolu, and Lian Meng (2001). "A Reevaluation of China's Economic Growth". China Economic Review 12(4): 338–346.
  37. ↑  Elizabeth Brainerd (2002). "Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union". Centre for Economic Policy Research.
  38. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. Introduction.
  39. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. Summary.
  40. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. Summary.
  41. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. Summary.
  42. ↑  The Farewell Dossier. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved on January 18, 2006.
  43. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. page 18
  44. ↑  Ofer, Gur. Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985, RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, 1988. ISBN 0-8330-0894-3. Introduction.
  45. ↑  Mortality in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: long-term trends and recent upturns. IUSSP/MPIDR Workshop "Determinants of Diverging Trends in Mortality". Retrieved on January 18, 2006.
  46. ↑  Bibliography: Courtois, 1999. Introduction
  47. ↑  Díaz-Briquets, Sergio, and Jorge Pérez-López (1998). "Socialism and Environmental Disruption: Implications for Cuba". Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy 8: 154–172.
  48. ↑  Steele, 2002.
  49. ↑  Manser, Roger (1994) Failed Transitions:. The New Press, New York. ISBN 1-56584-119-0.
  50. ↑  Non-industrial and regulated industrial systems are the most environmentally friendly. Steve Kangas' Liberal FAQ. Retrieved on January 18, 2006.
  51. ↑  Manser, Roger (1994) Failed Transitions:. The New Press, New York. ISBN 1-56584-119-0 (p. 146-149)
  52. ↑  Environmental Performance Reviews Programme. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.
  53. ↑  UNEP.Net Country Profiles. United Nations Environment Network. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.
  54. ↑  Manser, Roger (1994) Failed Transitions:. The New Press, New York. ISBN 1-56584-119-0 (p. 102-103)

[edit] Notes

<references/>

[edit] Further reading

  • Andrew G. Walder (ed.) Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of the Political Decline in China & Hungary (University of California Press, 1995) hardback. (ISBN 0-520-08851-4)
  • Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stephane Courtois, Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, September, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  • Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pages, ISBN 0-7679-0056-1
  • Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, W. W. Norton (1992), hardcover, ISBN 0-393-03076-8; trade paperback, Harpercollins (1993), ISBN 0-06-097540-7 Women of communist Yugoslavia.
  • János Kornai, The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992
  • Daniel Singer, Whose Millennium : Theirs or Ours ?, Monthly Review Press, 1999, ISBN 0-853459460

[edit] References on human rights violations by Communist states

  • Becker, Jasper (1998) Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine. Owl Books. ISBN 0-8050-5668-8.
  • Conquest, Robert (1991) The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-507132-8.
  • Conquest, Robert (1987) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  • Courtois,Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7.
  • Hamilton-Merritt, Jane (1999) Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20756-8.
  • Jackson, Karl D. (1992) Cambodia, 1975–1978 Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-02541-X.
  • Kakar, M. Hassan (1997)Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20893-5.
  • Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004) The History of the Gulag : From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Pres. ISBN 0-300-09284-9.
  • Natsios, Andrew S. (2002) The Great North Korean Famine. Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 1-929223-33-1.
  • Nghia M. Vo (2004) The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam McFarland & Company ISBN 0-7864-1714-5.
  • Pipes, Richard (1995) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-76184-5.
  • Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2006) Res. 1481 Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes
  • Rummel, R.J. (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-927-6.
  • Rummel, R.J. (1996). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers ISBN 1-56000-887-3.
  • Rummel, R.J. & Rummel, Rudolph J. (1999). Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Lit Verlag ISBN 3-8258-4010-7.
  • Todorov, Tzvetan & Zaretsky, Robert (1999). Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01961-1.
  • Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10322-0.

[edit] External links

[edit] Suuportive

[edit] Official Communist state websites

[edit] Various opinions

[edit] Critical

[edit] Online estimates of Communist democide

es:Estado socialista it:Stato comunista pt:Estado socialista ro:Stat comunist ru:Социалистические страны simple:Communist state sv:Kommunistiska stater vi:Hệ thống xã hội chủ nghĩa zh:共产主义国家

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