Anonymous ID: 839149 April 2, 2021, 4:25 a.m. No.13345727   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

>>13345716

 

Reflections on a Ravaged Century

by Robert Conquest

W.W. Norton / 336 pages / $26.95

 

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louise Panne, Adrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartooek, and Jean-Louis Margolin.

Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer

Harvard University Press / 858 pages / $37.50

 

The American Spectator Online Bookshelf

15 February 2000

Reviewed by Josh London

 

The End of Communism by Josh London"One death," Joseph Stalin was said to have remarked, "is a tragedy, one million is a statistic." What about, one must wonder, 80 or 100 million deaths? In reading the "Black Book of Communism," a groundbreaking effort by a group of French scholars to document the human costs of communism in the 20th century, one is immediately confronted with such discomfited figures. Stephane Courtois, in his introduction, crunches the numbers:

 

U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths; China: 65 million deaths; Vietnam: 1 million deaths; North Korea: 2 million deaths; Cambodia: 2 million deaths: Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths; Latin America: 150,000 deaths; Africa: 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths; The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: about 10,000 deathsโ€ฆ The total approaches 100 million people killed.

 

โ€ฆ

 

The Historian Edward Gibbon once wrote that "There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times." Yet, standing from his vantage point at the end of the 20th century, surveying the history of the last 100 years, Conquest is probably right to end his book, as he soberly does, with a warning. Although we are now living through an exceptionally optimistic historical moment, he reminds us that the "past is full of eras of progress that ended in darkness." We should not fool ourselves: "The power of fanaticism and of misunderstanding is by no means extinct."

 

https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/asreview.htm

Anonymous ID: 839149 April 2, 2021, 4:45 a.m. No.13345763   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

Typed 'spurious' into gloogoo for a definition refresher and No Name's head pops up with this text.

 

1 : of illegitimate birth : bastard. 2 : outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities : false the spurious eminence of the pop celebrity. 3a : of falsified or erroneously attributed origin : forged. b : of a deceitful nature or quality spurious excuses.