The Black Book of Communism
1997 book by Stéphane Courtois and others
Summary
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and deaths in labor camps and allegedly artificially created famines. The book was originally published in France as Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression by Éditions Robert Laffont. In the United States, it was published by Harvard University Press, with a foreword by Martin Malia. The German edition, published by Piper Verlag, includes a chapter written by Joachim Gauck. The introduction was written by Courtois. Historian François Furet was originally slated to write the introduction, but he died before he could.
Originally created by Gzornenplatz
10/10/2004, 12:46:19 PM
Modified
4/20/2026, 12:20:21 AM
Recent revisions
/* Overview */ ML is a form of communist thought but its transitional socialist state is not a form of communism.
/* Overview */
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Lenin and Stalin were not humanists; they were mass murderers who systematized this from the beginning. Several books from various eras prove that communism killed more than 100 million people; just read Volkogonov's biography of Stalin, which states that Stalin killed 22 million people in a conservative estimate.
Undid revision [[Special:Diff/1327632360|1327632360]] by [[Special:Contributions/~2025-40488-63|~2025-40488-63]] ([[User talk:~2025-40488-63|talk]]) The "exaggerated" aspect of the book is addressed elsewhere in the LEAD.
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Stalin's biography, written by the Soviet historian Volkogonov, the keeper of the archives, says Stalin killed 22 million people in genocide. And Mao: The Unknown Story, that Mao killed 78 million people in genocide. Only Wikipedia believes that killing 100 million people in genocide isn't wrong enough.
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