Useful Studies and Sources for Debating Reactionaries

@ComradeCorv

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Slavic Review (Cambridge University Press) | Fear and Belief in the USSR’s “Great Terror”: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939
- An article refuting many common misconceptions about the so-called “Great Terror” under Stalin, demonstrating that the number of people arrested was much lower than commonly supposed. Also discusses the general support of the Soviet people for the socialist government, refuting the notion of a “captive population” put forth by many reactionaries.
Slavic Review (Cambridge University Press) | On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Response to Robert Conquest on the USSR
- Robert W. Thurston, professor emeritus at Miami University (Ohio), thoroughly debunks the claims of Robert Conquest (and other reactionary historians) on the Stalin-period of the USSR, stating “Stalin, the press, and the Stakhanovite movement all regularly encouraged ordinary people to criticize those in authority.” He points out that many arrests in the 1930’s were actually late punishments for genuine offenses, such as serving in the White Army during the Civil War. Thuston also puts forth the question “If the citizenry was supposed to be terrorized and stop thinking, why encourage criticism and input from below on a large scale?” He also states that “my evidence suggests that widespread fear did not exist in the case at hand [the Soviet “Great Terror” period]”.
Yale University Press | Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941
- Investigates the extent of coercion and force in Stalin’s USSR, concluding that “Stalin did not intend to terrorize the country and did not need to rule by fear. Memoirs and interviews with Soviet people indicate that many more believed in Stalin’s quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.” The book also shows that “between 1934 and 1936 police and court practice relaxed significantly. Then a series of events, together with the tense international situation and memories of real enemy activity during the savage Russian Civil War, combined to push leaders and people into a hysterical hunt for perceived ‘wreckers.’ After late 1938, however, the police and courts became dramatically milder.”
  - One of the books more interesting comments, specifically relating to Stalin: “There was never a long period of Stalinism without a serious foreign threat, major internal dislocation, or both, which makes identifying its true nature impossible.” One of the more interesting statements from a bourgeois historian on Stalin, acknowledging that the repression of the Stalin period, far from being the casual whim of the man himself, emerged as a mass response to genuine threats.

“Communism Killed _____ Million People!”

Cambridge University Press | Origins of the Great Purges
- Debunks several classic myths surrounding the purges under Stalin, demonstrating how the death toll was far lower than previously estimated. Also states that the purges were not the deliberate result of nefarious plotting by Stalin, but rather the ad hoc results of inner-party conflict and attempts to consolidate power.
University of Melbourne | Current Knowledge on the Level and Nature of Mortality in the Ukrainian Famine of 1931-1933
- Demonstrates that the death toll of the Ukrainian famine (the so-called “Holodomor”) was between 1.8 and 2.8 million deaths, far lower than the 7-10 million cited by reactionary historians.
University of Birmingham | The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933
- Details the extent and causes of the Ukrainian famine, thoroughly debunking the claim that the famine was deliberately caused by Stalin, or the Soviet government in general.
University of Melbourne | The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-1945
- Analysis of excess mortality under Stalin and Hitler, finding that about three million “repression deaths” (either executions or deaths in prison) occurred under Stalin (far lower than the common claims of 20-50 million), stating “These are clearly much lower figures than those for whom Hitler’s regime was responsible.” The author of this paper, Stephen Wheatcroft, Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne, also wrote two other excellent articles describing the exaggeration of the Soviet death toll, and the manipulation of data by reactionary historians like Conquest and Rosefielde:
  - University of Melbourne | More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s
  - University of Melbourne | A Further Note of Clarification on the Famine, the Camps, and Excess Mortality
Chart Showing Mortality Rate in Gulags vs. Tsar-Era Prisons
- Using research by Wheatcroft and others as sources, charts out the mortality rate in Soviet gulags (which averaged around 4-5%, increasing to 10-20% for Nazi POW’s during WWII), contrasting them to Tsarist-era political prisons.
Le Monde | Authors of “Black Book of Communism” Reject Claim of “100 Million Deaths”, Citing Sloppy Scholarship by Lead Editor
- The lead authors of the infamous “Black Book of Communism” rejected the claim that 100 million people were killed by communism, claiming that this figure was the result of their work being distorted by the lead editor of the book.
  - It should also be noted that the authors themselves have had their work thoroughly questioned and disputed, with many historians (including some cited above) saying that their work is highly exaggerated and inaccurate.

“Capitalism Improves Quality of Life!”

The Guardian | Bill Gates Says Poverty Is Decreasing. He Couldn’t Be More Wrong.
- Professor Jason Hickel, from the London School of Economics, discusses what he calls the “coerced global proletarianisation” of people across the world, and debunks the common right-wing claim that global poverty is decreasing under capitalism. He cites Harvard economist Lant Pritchitt, who points out that the World Bank statistics on poverty reduction are torn to shreds when one adjusts the poverty line to a realistic standard for human life, and if one does this, then we see that global poverty is increasing, not decreasing, with well over half the global population living in poverty.
World Social and Economic Review | Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality, and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World
- Study which found that it would take over 200 years at current rates to eradicate global poverty, assuming an unchanging rate of growth. Most importantly, states that “poverty eradication, even at $1.25-a-day, and especially at a poverty line which better reflects the satisfaction of basic needs, can be reconciled with global carbon constraints only by a major increase in the share of the poorest in global economic growth, far beyond what can realistically be achieved by existing instruments of development policy – that is, by effective measures to reduce global inequality.” I.e. Capitalism cannot successfully solve the problem of global poverty.
BBC Health | Privatization in Post-Soviet States “Raised Death Rate”, Says Lancet Medical Journal
- A study from the Lancet (perhaps the most prestigious medical journal on Earth) found that “as many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatization policies.” Some states got the worst of it, as the study notes “Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were worst affected, with a tripling of unemployment and a 42% increase in male death rates between 1991 and 1994.”
New Economic School | Mortality and Life Expectancy in Post-Communist Countries
- Study exploring the huge increase in mortality rates following the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe. This is contrasted with Cuba, which had an increase in life expectancy during this time, despite suffering an economic crisis due to the fall of the USSR. This indicates that the health crises were not simply linked to economic turmoil, but rather the restoration of capitalism.
The New York Times | Wealth Grows, But Health Care Withers in China
- Article describing how market reforms in China caused the collapse of the socialist healthcare system, leading to massive health problems among the population.

@ComradeCorv

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World Health Organization (United Nations) | 6 in 10 People Continue to Lack Access to Safe Sanitation, 3 in 10 Lack Clean Drinking Water at Home
- Report from the WHO finding that a majority of the world’s population continues to lack safe sanitation, while around 30% have no safe drinking water at home. According to the World Bank, it would cost $150 billion to provide free sanitation and clean drinking water to every person on Earth. This is less than 60% of Apple’s total revenue last year.
  - Reuters | The Cost of Clean Water: $150 Billion a Year, Says World Bank
Wikisource | Memo PPS23 by George Kennan
- An internal memo to the U.S. Secretary of State, discussing the post-WWII Marshall Plan, as well as general anti-communist strategy. The memo states that capitalist intervention in the third-world is necessary because communism “has a greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than anything we could oppose to it.” Also contains one of the most blatant imperialist statements ever written: “In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. […] We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”
Economic Policy Institute | The Productivity-Pay Gap
- Demonstrates how wages have failed to rise with productivity for decades, showing how exploitation of workers is growing as capitalism develops further.

“Capitalism is Democratic!”

Princeton University | Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
- Study from Princeton and Northwestern, which found that “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." This demonstrates the corrosive effect that capitalism has on democracy.
American Journal of Public Health | Consequences of the Private Funding of Medical Care and the Privatized Electoral Process
- Study from Vicente Navarro of Johns Hopkins University, discussing the healthcare debate in the United States, and the limitations it reveals in capitalist democracy.

Atrocities of Capitalism

University of Kent | State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South
- Discusses the extensive record of US-backed state terrorism by right-wing governments in Latin America.
Princeton University Press | The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-1966
- Details the anti-communist purges in Indonesia, which killed over half a million people, leaving over a million more in detention centers. Some sources have alleged that the purges killed as many as three million people:
  - BBC World News | Looking Into the Massacres of Indonesia’s Past
Yale University | East Timor Genocide
- Describes the genocide in East Timor, carried out by the US-backed Suharto regime, which killed about a third of the entire population.
Cambridge University Press | The Cambridge History of Iran
- Discusses the 1917-1919 Persian famine, which killed about 2 million people from a population of 10 million (i.e. approx. 20% of the entire population). Confiscation of foodstuffs by British soldiers was a major cause of the famine, and the book states that the famine “as usual was worsened by speculators and hoarders.” CIA analyst Steven R. Ward also wrote a book acknowledging this devastating famine:
  - Georgetown University Press | Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
International Business Times | Bengal Famine of 1943: A Man-Made Holocaust
- Discusses how approx. 3 million people died in the Bengal famine, which was deliberately worsened by the British government (particularly Winston Churchill). This famine, despite killing approximately as many people as the Holodomor, and in less time, is rarely discussed. This is despite the fact that, unlike the Holodomor, there is real evidence that this famine was deliberately inflicted.
Princeton University Press | The Spanish Republic and the Civil War
- Describes Franco’s ‘White Terror’, which killed between 50,000 and 200,000 people, more than double the number of people killed by the so-called ‘Red Terror’ of the Spanish Civil War.

“Ask Somebody Who Lived Under Communism!”

Studies consistently find that people in most ex-socialist countries feel that life was better under socialism than it is under capitalism:

Many people still remember life before socialism, and remain appreciative for its achievements:

The Independent | My Family Live in Cuba. The People May Be Poor, But Fidel Castro’s Legacy Will Live On

I will add more sources as I find them. Hopefully I can turn this into a giant compilation of evidence against reactionary arguments.

@ComradeCorv

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Useful Studies and Sources for Debating Reactionaries

Useful Studies and Sources for Debating Reactionaries

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