Read the communism page. Does it mention the hundred million plus dead because of communism?
Only "Excess deaths"...
Only "Excess deaths"...
For example, researchers can measure excess deaths in 2020 compared to the previous year and find a gap between that and confirmed covid deaths in every country. For example, if the caretaker of a child or disabled or elderly person was suddenly hospitalized without time to find a substitute, and they didn't survive due to lack of care.
I do observe tendency in modern world to white-wash communism, and cancel facts about crimes committed by communist regimes.
I know it sounds crazy and I don't have any evidence, but one possible explanation of the trend - Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda.
Do you?
This is true regardless of what ideology helped the regime take root. Recognizing this fact is not whitewashing anything.
To give you a less personal (to you) example, the Islamic State of Irak and Levant filmed and uploaded executions of hundreds of people, and killed many, many more people off-screen. They have "Islam" in their name.
Should the page about "Islam (religion)" put ISIL front and center, despite them existing for less than a 1‰ of time Islam existed, and having similarly little adherents in comparison to global population of muslims?
About 25% of the world population are Muslims, roughly 25% of modern countries are predominantly Muslims, yet as you wrote in the comment, ISIL is a small percentage in both space and time.
For communist countries, these atrocities seem more like a rule than an exception. Soviet Union, countries of Eastern Block in 20-th century, China – they all did horrible things.
Wikipedia’s articles about fascism and nazism do mention war crimes and genocides, rightfully so. Yet Wikipedia’s article about communism does not. They do have two links in the “Related topics” section, but other links in that section aren’t particularly related, they also link to capitalism and trade union there.
EDIT: I see it's probably the same link you saw in Related topics, so it's mentioned twice on the page. Should it be mentioned in the text of the article? I don't know. There's similarly no mention of crussades on the Christianity page.
The “communism” article links to the mass murders from the very last page, in an article about 10 pages long. Looking at the edit history of that article, I see the edits to change that are systematically reverted: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&type=re...
And I say that as an Eastern European.
Yep, also China and North Korea. And in recent history, the evils of Cambodia, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia.
I don’t believe these are coincidences or implementation issues, the list is too long for that. Can’t explain with soviet occupation either, some countries on the list are very far away and never had Soviet military presence.
Please, don't. Putting PRL anywhere near Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, or even Hungary is very, very wrong.
We had no mass murders here. There were some deaths during workers' protests. There was censorship, and political dissidents were put in prison, some others were denied employment. There was a lot of surveilance. And we had a martial law declared for a while in '81.
On the other hand, millions of people were educated (even if Marxism-Leninism was a part of curriculum and some parts of history were erased (like mass-murder of Polish officers by NKVD near Katyn)), millions of people got a chance to work (as long as they didn't publicly criticize socialism or the party too much), to own an apartment; the children got to go to vacations by the sea or in the mountains. Millions of people were lifted from poverty. The pubic infrastructure (roads, trains, hospitals, schools, etc.) improved so much that comparison with the state before war would be a joke.
Czechoslovakia and Hungary had Soviet tanks roll over their protests. That was bad. Nothing like that happened in Poland (arguably the '81 was done to avoid such an intervention).
So, don't use Poland as an example of how horrible communism is. Because in Poland - it wasn't. Not to mention, even the official propaganda wasn't saying we lived under communism - it was called socialism, and was deemed a first stage before world-wide communist revolotution. Which somehow never materialized, and nobody cried because of that.
EDITED to add:
> I don’t believe these are coincidences or implementation issues
These are not coincidences. This is what happens under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. As I said already: it doesn't matter what ideology was used to rise to power, once the power is unchecked, it will be abused. There were decidedly anti-communist regimes in South America and parts of Europe and Middle East which murdered people left and right, too.
You seem to want to see communism as bad, because people you call communist did something bad to you and your family. I'm sorry, but that's wrong way to look at it. Some people with psychopatic tendencies got to use an ideology (which they probably never understood, nor cared to understand) to seize power and abuse it.
Also, I really didn't want to use this card, but maybe there was a reason (other than them being psychopats) for what they did? Maybe they hunted people who collaborated with Nazi forces during the war (you know there were quite a few, right?) Maybe they were afraid they'd be hanged on street lamps (like in Hungary) if they didn't put out the dissent quickly enough?
History is not black and white. "Communism is bad and makes people do bad things" is very wrong way to look at it.
At least 40 people were killed during martial law, and over 10000 interned. Dozens of people were murdered by security forces in the previous years too. Reducing that to "some deaths" just feels tone-deaf.
>The public infrastructure (roads, trains, hospitals, schools, etc.) improved so much that comparison with the state before war would be a joke.
It would be surprising if absolutely nothing improved for over 40 years. But in the end, economy and infrastructure was a joke when compared to Western block. When looking at it it's hard to classify infrastructure development during PRL as success, really.
>(arguably the '81 was done to avoid such an intervention)
This is widely disputed, and most people who promoted this view were themselves involved in introducing martial law, so...
>History is not black and white. "Communism is bad and makes people do bad things" is very wrong way to look at it.
It certainly isn't black and white, but whitewashing totalitarian regime because they didn't kill enough people to classify as mass killing isn't solution either.
Look, the state killing off its people is always bad, yes. What's tone-deaf, though, is equaling dozens of deaths, or even hundreds of deaths, with this (China):
> Estimates of the death toll in Cultural Revolution, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly, ranging from hundreds of thousands to 20 million.
This (Ukraine/Soviet Union):
> By the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or otherwise died unnaturally in the Soviet republics. Total population loss (including stillbirth) across the union is estimated at 6–7 million.
This (Cambodia):
> According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5 million to 2 million, although figures as low as 1 million and as high as 3 million have been cited; conventionally accepted estimates of executions range from 500,000 to 1 million, "a third to one half of excess mortality during the period".
and so on, and on, and on.
> This is widely disputed,
Which is why I wrote "arguably".
> whitewashing totalitarian regime because they didn't kill enough people to classify as mass killing isn't solution either
I'm not whitewashing anything. I'm saying that, as far as authoritarian regimes this side of the Iron Courtain go, PRL was relatively peaceful, killed off relatively small amount of people, and - on the other hand - improved living conditions of a relatively large percentage of the population.
As I said many times at this point: when the power goes unchecked, it will be abused. It was also true in the PRL. But there is a spectrum of how bad it gets, and on that spectrum Poland was possibly one of the easiests places to live in the whole Eastern Bloc. Ignoring this is not "being true to historical facts", it's just blatantly pushing an agenda.
Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two.
Isn't the point of free speech that the merits of ideas get challenged? The merits of the argument:
1. P is a crazy idea
2. There is no evidence for P
C. Therefore P
are few and far between.
> Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two.
We're talking about Soviet and Chinese Communism (and their offshoots). Both of these forms of Communism have had great results as well as terrible. Looking at China now and comparing it to China before Communism I see development that is nothing short of astonishing. Or even just over the last four decades. I don't know how many have been saved by increased standards of living, access to healthcare, and general governmental competence, but I do know that the number is very high. Compare this to a country which has not been under Communism: India. How many have died due to lack of development, lack of access to healthcare, governmental incompetence, etc.?
I do not think that this is a crazy idea at all [1]
As for India, it has many of its own bureaucratic problems without having to be a communist state, true, but to claim that this in any way legitimizes communist social management is absurd. If my family gets sick and some of them die of neglect in my house, it doesn't make my neighbor who outright starved and murdered most of his family any less reprehensible. In any case, India too saw large increases in human development as it left behind pseudo-socialist policies and embraced a more market-friendly form of governance during the same time-frame as China..
India's issues being the result of bureaucratic problems is not what I suggest.
> If my family gets sick and some of them die of neglect in my house, it doesn't make my neighbor who outright starved and murdered most of his family any less reprehensible
I agree. But that is not analogous to the situation with Chinese Communism. A more analogous situation is this one: A man has ten children, each of whom has fallen sick. The man decides to heal them. He has little knowledge, and due to his poor care the first three children he treats die. But he learns from his mistakes, and he successfully heals the rest of his children.
At first, we thought poorly of the man. "Doesn't he know that this method of healing will only hurt his children?" we asked. But as the man learned more and more about healing, we realised that his heart had always been in the right place, and that he was now great caregiver.
And, meanwhile, the neighbor's ten children had also fallen sick. This man decided it was best to let nature take its course, and he did not try to heal his children. Four passed away, three were sickly for the rest of their lives, and three fully recovered.
Looking at these two fathers, at first we looked down on the one who tried to heal his children, but only hurt them. Much better to let nature take its course, we thought. But, by the end, we realised that the first man was in fact the better carer for his children.
> In any case, India too saw large increases in human development as it left behind pseudo-socialist policies and embraced a more market-friendly form of governance during the same time-frame as China..
As a developing country, development is expected. The presence of development is almost irrelevant. So let's compare the rate of development of the two countries: even as India has developed, it has at the same time fallen further and further behind China. And let's compare the nature of the development: In China, unprecedented efforts have been made to ensure that the poorest of the nation are lifted up. In India, this is far from the case.
The countless countries with less state-control of the economy than China, but worse economic performance, stand as evidence strong that this is false.
Not sure what a bureaucratic administration is meant to have to do with communism.
I'm not saying there's no bias on the Wiki, but it manifests in interpretations and wording choices, the facts are generally there. At least in the articles about history, which I read regularly.
As an example, read the page on George Washington and you'll see he recommended a total war against indigenous people of America, "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible". It's downplayed, explained away in all kinds of ways, but the fact is there.