Re: Michael Pugliese's prefatory remarks on the Black Book

[Paul Flewers <paul.flewers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Pugliese wrote: < On the argument of S Courtois, and "class
genocide". That was the phrase used by right-wing German historian,
Ernest Nolte, in the "Historians Debate" in Germany in the mid-70's,
that was an attempt by the right to "normalize" the Nazi experience and
rehabilitate them as only trying to save the Christian West from the
Godless Bolshevik Devils. From other reviews of the Courtois book, I
gather that he was a Trotskyist back in the 60's? Anyone know details.
Alain Krivine's group or some other splinter?
>
I recently got a review copy of The Black Book of Communist Misdeeds, or
whatever it's called, from Harvard University Press. I'm surprised that
a supposedly reputable Uni press wants to run something as bad as this
book. When my review is done, I'll post it on the list.

In the meantime, here are some observations from a quick look at it.
Firstly, it's a rehash of every anti-communist hack's outpourings since
the 1920s, and most recently inflicted on us by Richard Pipes and
Vladimir Brovkin. Bolshevism = rule by terror. That's it. Everything
from October 1917 through to Pol Pot and Kim Jung Il can be blamed on
Lenin's penchant for terror. Quite simply, it's nothing that hasn't been
said by right-wingers since the cannon on the Aurora cooled down and the
Winter Palace was stormed.

There's very little original research, a few quotes from the Russian
archives, most footnotes refer to other people's works.

What is amazing is that I've found no reference to the slaughter of
CPers in Indonesia in 1965, and that whilst describing jailings of
political dissidents in Cuba and Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, there
is nothing -- yes, nothing -- on the numbers of political killings by
right-wing regimes and movements in other Latin American states. What
makes this worse is that the guys who wrote this book see themselves as
being 'on the left' -- no kidding!! -- so who did they get to write the
foreword? Martin Malia, one of the most conservative US historians.

I wonder sometimes if it is compulsory for tired ex-lefties in France to
write this sort of stuff. A rites of passage to a respectable career in
politics or academe.

Paul F