Stephane Courtois｜The Black Book of Communism

The book was published by the French publisher Laffont in November 1997 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It is a monumental work on communism, a summary of the evils of communism compiled by experts from around the world who study communism. The communist movement caused at least 150 million deaths due to the tyranny of the Communist Party, of which more than 100 million were massacred by the communist regimes in Asia. Based on original archival materials, this book comprehensively exposes the deliberately concealed history of the crimes of the Communist Party. Without exception, communist regimes are all totalitarian autocracies, all of which have committed massacres, the killing of political enemies and allies within the party and the people; the implementation of secret police and special agent terror rule; the robbery of public and private property; the forced collectivization of agriculture to create murderous famines; forced labor camps and slavery; the persecution of religious believers; the destruction of civil society; the blockade of news; forced brainwashing; trampling on the law, torture and forced disappearances, and other twelve categories of crimes. The book profoundly reveals that the communist regimes are essentially lawless totalitarian autocracies.

The book is 846 pages long and was written by 11 authors. If divided by region, the book is divided into five parts: the first part, “A State Regime Against the People”, records the history of Soviet autocracy and repression from the founding of the Soviet Union to the death of Stalin in 1953, written by Nicolas Werth, a Soviet history expert and researcher at the Institute of Contemporary Studies, which is the most important and highly acclaimed part of the book; the second part is entitled “World Revolution, Civil War and Terror”, discussing the terror and violent activities of the Communist International; the third part discusses Eastern Europe, entitled “Another Europe – Victims of Communism”; the fourth part is “Asian Communism: Part Five: Between ‘Re-education’ and Massacre”, which includes nearly a hundred pages on China;