The Largest Mass Murder in History

The Black Book of Communism is a must-read for everyone who cherishes liberty. The book depicts possibly the largest-ever genocide perpetrated in history - the communist bloodbath of the 20th century.
Most people are aware of the Great Purge and Stalin's GULAG slave labor camps. Not everyone knows, however, that Soviet Russia's entire history, from 1917 through the start of the perestroika in 1985, is one uninterrupted mass murder (and even during the perestroika repressions and oppression continued, though they took a milder form). It was the Bolshevik party's war of extermination upon its own people, far surpassing the Holocaust in its scale.
I'm going to focus on just one aspect of this genocide - the Bolsheviks' relations with the largest segment of the country's population, the peasantry. Prior to the October Revolution of 1917, peasant rebellions paved the way for Bolshevik despotism. Blinded by their medieval mentality and stirred up by the neo-medieval doctrine of socialist revolutionaries, Russian peasants were unwilling to become Western-style farmers and preferred to seize nobles' land, as opposed to earning wealth through their own productive effort. They also preferred egalitarianism to liberty. Well, one can say that they asked for it.
The Bolsheviks obtained power by promising them land and peace. They got land alright - in the graveyard - and peace too - the peace of the dead.
As far as land is concerned, the communists immediately deprived the peasants of most of that land's products. Although grain requisitions had been widely practiced in many wars before the Bolsheviks, the communist practice was by far the most destructive ever. The communists seized the bulk of agricultural products, often leaving nothing for the peasants to feed on, let alone sell. Those who refused to surrender their products were summarily shot.
As for peace, peasants returning from the trenches of World War I were soon drafted into the Red Army to wage war upon the victims of Bolshevik tyranny.
Few know that, besides the White Army and Red Army, there was a third major force in the Russian Civil War - the so-called Green Army (not to be confused with environmentalists). This was the army of the peasants. Since the self-styled "party of the workers and peasants" waged a total war upon the peasants (and upon the workers too), the peasants had to organize for self-defense. For a brief period, they even controlled almost the entire countryside in many regions, with the Bolsheviks holding on to the cities as foreign invaders in an occupied country. The communists' crackdown on the rebels was so brutal that it almost surpasses belief. They took hostages and shot them until rebels came out of the forests. Torture and rape were an everyday practice.
Soon the Bolsheviks' requisitions caused a gigantic famine in the early 1920s. Many communists even said them that famine was quite helpful for the Soviet government, since it helped crush the peasants' independence. And eventually it did.
The New Economic Policy was a brief respite in the Bolsheviks' "invasion" of the countryside. Markets were reintroduced, and relative prosperity was achieved. But as soon as the markets helped the peasants start producing wealth again, the communists resumed their brutal war against the peasants in the late 1920s to loot that wealth.
The new offensive caused another famine. This one was unprecedented - 7 million people died because of the forced collectivization and expropriation of farm produce. When piles of corpses filled the country, and cannibalism became a usual phenomenon, the Soviet government still continued exporting expropriated grain to cash in on the peasants' sufferings. Almost no domestic aid to those affected was delivered, and foreign aid was unavailable because the Soviet government hid the very fact of the famine and did not intend to apply for any aid. Once again, the famine was the Bolsheviks' ally in the genocide of the peasants.
Kulaks (which usually means "wealthy peasants" but during the collectivization it basically meant any peasant whom Soviet authorities didn't like) were either shot, imprisoned in death camps or sent to "colonize" uncultivated lands in far-away regions, often with no shelter and no means of survival, where they starved to death en masse.
It is not surprising that, during the early stage of World War 2, many peasants, who comprised the bulk of the Soviet army, viewed the Nazi occupation as a welcome respite from Bolshevik tyranny (the Nazis were not much better, though still less oppressive). Indeed, the gigantic army's rapid disintegration during this period ceases to be a mystery. This time, the peasants were on the winning side in their war with the Bolsheviks.
Considering this unprecedented gigantic genocide, one is astonished to find out that a majority of Russia's population - i.e. the victims of the Soviet mass murderers and their descendants - have nostalgic feelings about the Soviet era. During a recent poll, Stalin came third in a ranking of Russia's most venerated heroes.
The main problem with Russia is, of course, not a lack of fair elections. Moreover, the situation perhaps would be much more terrible if elections were not rigged. At a recent election of the Moscow legislature, the communists won in districts where United Russia, the Kremlin thug club, abstained from rigging for PR purposes.
The Soviet anthem still defiles the airwaves with its murderous roar as GULAG slaves are turning in their graves. The country is still being ruled by the old party and KGB elite, which changed the façade but not the essence.
That can be partially explained by the fact that many who now praise the Soviet Union were accomplices in the regime's crimes. The most terrible of all, however, is the "sanction of the victims" - that is, victims' belief that their murderers and slavedrivers had a legitimate right to run their lives and destroy them. The Bolsheviks had indeed achieved their goal - not only did they crush every independent, thinking man's resistance. They turned people's brains into piles of excrement that automatically perceive good as evil and evil as good.
Though the recent OSCE resolution equating Stalinism with Nazism and the European Parliament resolution declaring the Holodomor a crime against humanity are steps in the right direction, they are far from sufficient.
The "Stalinism" label was a misnomer, and the OSCE's unwillingness to condemn communism in general is a sign of dishonesty and ignorance. Moreover, no Nuremberg trial has been held for the communist murderers, and those remaining are still at large and even prosperous.
Even in the West communists, though weaker than previously, are still prominent. To use one example, Italy was until recently ruled by a successor party to the local communist gang (I mean Prodi's party). The party changed the veneer, but the same people remained.
The main reason is that the West, while condemning Stalin's unprecedented massacre, is unable to grasp the link between Stalinism and the essence of communism on the one hand and between communism and socialism in general on the other hand. Socialism is still viewed as something quite innocent and benign, as opposed to communism. That, however, is not the case. Fundamentally, socialism and communism are the same thing. Social democracy is a mixed condition that is destined to either collapse into communism or reject socialism and turn into a free society.
Another problem is people's inability to comprehend the conceptual connection between altruism and communism. While upholding the altruist roots of communism, they inevitably fall into a contradiction when they condemn communist crimes.