Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals Crimes against humanity under communist regimes Research review ISBN: 978-91-977487-2-8 Crimes against humanity under communist regimes Research review Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals. ISBN: 978-91-977487-2-8 Crimes against humanity under communist regimes. Research review. Forum for Living History 2008. Authors: Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals. Layout: Hampus Brynolf Print: Edita, 2008 Forum for Living History Box 2123 103 13 Stockholm [email protected] www.levandehistoria.se ISBN: 978-91-977487-2-8 © Forum för levande historia 2008 CONTENTS CONTENTS 3 A totalitarian platform 60 INTRODUCTION 4 A reception history platform 63 Terms 5 The People’s Republic of China 67 Terms of reference 6 Consolidation of the regime (1949- New trends in research – three analytical 1953): ‘Suppression of perspectives 8 counterrevolution’ 68 RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION 9 The hunt for ‘internal enemies’ and Soviet communist criminal history 9 ‘rightists’ (1954-1958) 73 The Red Terror 10 The ‘Great Leap Forward’ (1958-1961) 76 Dekulakisation 12 ‘The Great Proletarian Cultural The terror famine 13 Revolution’ (1966-1976) 81 Gulag 14 CAMBODIA 88 The Great Terror 15 Criminal history of Cambodia 88 The ‘punished peoples’ 18 Background 89 Anticosmopolitanism 19 Mass violence and its mechanisms 90 Sources and archives 20 The old against the new, rural against Four paths to knowledge 22 urban, utopia against history 92 Conquest 23 Ethnicity and race 93 The source and archive revolution 24 The end – and the beginning 93 The academic debate 26 Sources and archives 94 The three paradigms 26 The academic debate 95 Totalitarianism 27 A totalitarian regime 95 Research practice 28 A peasants’ revolution 97 Revisionism 29 A genocidal society 98 Research practice 31 History and culture 99 Postrevisionism 33 Reception history 102 Contradictions and paradoxes 36 SUMMARY 103 Victim studies and microhistories 38 The official history and the scientific The cultural change 41 interpretation patterns 104 Memories of the terror – reception Paradigm shifts 107 history perspective 44 Future research 110 Paradigms and transitions 46 Comparing communism and Nazism 48 Difficult questions and limited research 49 Good and bad intentions? 50 Three comparative perspectives 54 A historical platform 56 INTRODUCTION Klas-Göran Karlsson This report is an analysis of research carried out on of how they are manifested in leading academic crimes against humanity perpetrated by communist works. Bearing in mind the controversial nature of regimes. Michael Schoenhals is responsible for the the area of research, issues relating to the sociology section on research on the Chinese regime’s crimes and politics of science cannot be omitted from the against humanity. Klas-Göran Karlsson wrote the analyses. other sections. The report has been drawn up for the Forum for Living History, which in turn has been The research review is organised as follows: After this tasked by the government with ‘elucidating and introduction, there is an analysis of the terms that informing on communism’s crimes against humanity’. may arise and that have been used in research to The report is not only meant to document the classify the crimes of the communist regimes: terror development and front lines of research. It should also and genocide are discussed as well as crimes against function as a basis for a more extensive and outward- humanity. This is followed by a discussion of the focused information initiative from the Forum. terms of reference that are both necessary and Furthermore it should, as noted in the guidelines, desirable in a scientific study of this nature. One ‘analyse the need for additional and advanced research important issue here is that of which regimes and and, if necessary, initiate such research’. In terms of countries should be placed in the focus of the need for research, the final section points out historiographical analysis. Other terms of reference areas that have not been researched in depth and that relate to the chronological scope of the review, its have the potential to offer new knowledge and thematic scope, and its comparative perspective. Thus perspectives. However, the initiation of such research far, the question of comparative perspective has is outside the reasonable remit of a report writer. primarily concerned the sensitive issue of the extent to which the criminal histories of the Nazi and Soviet This research review does not claim to list all research communist regimes can and should be compared. on the communist regimes’ crimes against humanity. Bearing in mind the large number of books written The research review will then focus on the crimes on Soviet communism in particular, and on the terror against humanity committed by three communist of the last decade in the West and in post-Soviet regimes – the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia. Eastern Europe, this would be an impossible task. Each country and each criminal history is discussed Rather, its purpose is to identify and analyse the main individually. Introductory sections will describe the lines of research as they have appeared and been actual crimes committed and identify perpetrator developed, primarily in the leading academic groups and institutions as well as categories of publications of recent decades. These publications victims. The underlying circumstances and have mostly been written by historians, but also by mechanisms of the crimes will also be analysed. representatives of other humanities and social science Within this chronological context, the most disciplines, and in some cases also by authors and important research problems and areas of conflict will other intellectuals with no direct link to the academic be pointed out. Following short reports of the community. The review will include publications in situation in terms of access to relevant documentation the Scandinavian languages, English, French, and source material, there will be detailed analyses of German, Russian and Chinese. A research review the research carried out and research in progress on th such as this must make mention of some of the the crimes against humanity perpetrated in the 20 fundamental questions of scientific and historical century by the communist regimes selected. The key theory on the nature of scientific knowledge and on themes of each criminal history, as presented in the the driving forces of history, not as a goal in itself, but most prominent national and international research placing these questions in their historiographical and literature, will be exposed and analysed. On the analytical context. One idea is for these main outlines matter of Soviet terror – undoubtedly the most to be illustrated empirically, through concrete analyses extensive and well-developed area of research – it is possible to identify three well-defined schools of to the ideology have used it as a source of ideas that thought or paradigms, which correspond to different dress historical events as ‘objectively’ regulated by law, conditions in terms of societal development, which means that ‘victims’ along the way towards the development of scientific theory, and access to ideal communist society can be viewed as both relevant source material. It is also justifiable to devote necessary and legitimate. particular attention to the crimes of the Soviet communist regime, as the crimes of the Russian The term ‘crimes against humanity’, used in the Bolshevik and Soviet communist regime came first formulation of the title of this review, has been in use and as such, were the most ‘original’. The section on for a hundred years and is used in international legal the Soviet Union will also cover how research has and political discourse to describe the Young Turk tackled issues relating to the relationship between, on government’s brutal treatment of its Armenian one side, Stalin, Stalinist communism and the Gulag, subjects during the First World War in the declining and on the other side, Hitler, Nazism and Auschwitz. Ottoman Empire. It was codified for the first time As such, the classic debate on totalitarianism will be thirty years later, in the statute that formed the legal reviewed, and new research efforts on totalitarian ground for the International Military Tribunal in societies will be presented. A reception historical Nuremberg following the Second World War, and perspective will also be laid out: How have the was then broadly defined as ‘murder, extermination, societies affected by large-scale crimes against their enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts own citizens been affected by these crimes? How have committed against civilian populations, before or they dealt with them with the benefit of hindsight? during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds…’. This definition is very similar to In the final chapter, the analytical threads are drawn the one in the 1998 Rome Statute, the treaty that has together. The summary serves as a background for regulated the International Criminal Court (ICC) reflection on weaknesses and shortcomings in the since 20021. research carried out so far, and for a number of personal wishes for research in this area, which could This broad definition has the advantage in this realistically be carried out by the Swedish academic context that it covers all the widely varying types of community. inhumane actions carried out by communist regimes against their own people, and the various underlying Terms