Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, advocates that we make November 7 (today) the Victims of Communism Day. I agree.
I can’t think of much to add to what he said and I can’t say it better. Here are two of his key paragraphs:
The Soviet Union did not have the highest death toll of any communist regime. That dubious distinction belongs to the People’s Republic of China. North Korea has probably surpassed the USSR in the sheer extent of totalitarian control over everyday life. Pol Pot’s Cambodia may have surpassed it in terms of the degree of sadistic cruelty and torture practiced by the regime, though this is admittedly very difficult to measure. But all of these tyrannies – and more – were at least in large part part variations on the Soviet original.
And:
The Black Book of Communism estimates the total number of victims of communist regimes at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny.
The picture above is of bones of tortured prisoners, Kolyma Gulag, in the USSR.
READER COMMENTS
Fazal Majid
Nov 7 2021 at 5:48pm
They don’t just have dead in Kolyma’s gulags, but a literal “Road of Bones” where the bodies of an estimated 250,000-1,000,000 prisoners who died constructing it were simply plowed under and are part of the road itself.
Mark Brady
Nov 7 2021 at 5:49pm
“Victims of real existing socialism”? “Victims of state capitalism”? “Victims of what Senator Joseph McCarthy called communism”? But whatever they were, were they victims of (unqualified) communism?
Airman Spry Shark
Nov 7 2021 at 6:28pm
With DRH’s examples, “victims of self-described communist regimes” should suffice.
Matthias
Nov 7 2021 at 11:50pm
That’s probably true. Though many atrocities also happened in self-described democracies.
(In fact, most of those self described communist countries also sled described as some flavour of democratic.)
Mark Brady
Nov 8 2021 at 1:22am
Part of what I had in mind is that these regimes did not call themselves “communist.”
Jeremy
Nov 8 2021 at 7:08am
I’m fairly certain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did, in fact, consider itself to be a communist nation; as does the PRC, which is controlled to this day by the Communist Party of China. As to whether anyone was a “victim of (unqualified) communism)”, might I suggest you look up the book “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”? It might prove rather enlightening, if you keep an open mind.
Mark Brady
Nov 9 2021 at 4:59pm
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union anticipated the arrival of a communist society within the lifetimes of its youngest citizens. It did not claim to have established a communist society. Neither does the Communist Party of China. And if the present set-up of authoritarianism, private property, and markets that characterizes the present-day PRC is “communism,” isn’t it equally well “capitalism”?
Zeke5123
Nov 8 2021 at 8:40am
Yes, no true Scotsman.
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