Have American scholars been ignoring communist atrocities?
IF MORAL clarity graced our times, the publication of Paul Hollander’s comprehensive compilation of first-hand accounts by former communist victims, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, would elicit a collective shudder of horror and sorrow.
“Systematic evil at work: evil without conscience.” So does Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield describe the grotesque crimes the selections illustrate. The book provides “an indispensable experience for the understanding of our times.” No wonder it lingered in manuscript for several years: One publisher after another, simply reflecting readers’ priorities, turned down the project until finally the Intercollegiate Studies Institute saved the day. Having failed to predict communism’s collapse, our political experts now seem eager to forget about it altogether.
Indeed, as Hollander notes in his introduction, “it is difficult to identify a single American scholar specializing in Communist political violence, either as a comparative endeavor or as one focused on a particular Communist system.” The incomparable Robert Conquest of the Hoover Institution, among the first to expose the enormity of Soviet crimes, was born in Great Britain, and Anne Applebaum, whose breathtaking 2005 work Gulag: A History earned her a Pulitzer Prize, is a journalist. Hollander, who taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was born in Hungary, which he fled after the abortive revolution of 1956. His tome demonstrates that comparative communist political violence is a field eminently ripe for academic study. It is also an impressive tribute to the most horrific event of the last century apart from the Holocaust.
Communist crimes are less known than fascist ones. While newly released archives from the former Soviet bloc will unquestionably deepen our understanding of the Holocaust, we already have a plethora of photographic documentation, surviving physical evidence, magnificent museums and survivor testimony. By contrast, Soviet atrocities are practically ignored....
Read entire article at Juliana Geron Pilon at the website of the National Interest Online
“Systematic evil at work: evil without conscience.” So does Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield describe the grotesque crimes the selections illustrate. The book provides “an indispensable experience for the understanding of our times.” No wonder it lingered in manuscript for several years: One publisher after another, simply reflecting readers’ priorities, turned down the project until finally the Intercollegiate Studies Institute saved the day. Having failed to predict communism’s collapse, our political experts now seem eager to forget about it altogether.
Indeed, as Hollander notes in his introduction, “it is difficult to identify a single American scholar specializing in Communist political violence, either as a comparative endeavor or as one focused on a particular Communist system.” The incomparable Robert Conquest of the Hoover Institution, among the first to expose the enormity of Soviet crimes, was born in Great Britain, and Anne Applebaum, whose breathtaking 2005 work Gulag: A History earned her a Pulitzer Prize, is a journalist. Hollander, who taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was born in Hungary, which he fled after the abortive revolution of 1956. His tome demonstrates that comparative communist political violence is a field eminently ripe for academic study. It is also an impressive tribute to the most horrific event of the last century apart from the Holocaust.
Communist crimes are less known than fascist ones. While newly released archives from the former Soviet bloc will unquestionably deepen our understanding of the Holocaust, we already have a plethora of photographic documentation, surviving physical evidence, magnificent museums and survivor testimony. By contrast, Soviet atrocities are practically ignored....