A White Paper on The Black Book

by Joseph D. Doaglass Jr.

In 1997, The Black Book of Communism was published in France. The book examined and documented the crimes against civilians as the essence of terror and repression in vinous Communist regimes.

This phenomenon was not something that emerged only as Communism moved "off course." It was present right from the beginning and was present in all regimes as the Communist leaders began their reign with an effort to crush all "class enemies." The magnitude of their crimes was enormous -- in the neighborhood of 100 million deaths -. even after those deaths for which the Soviets were found guilty were deeply discounted to a mere 20 million.

In his foreword to the 1999 English edition, Professor Martin Malia wrote: "The Communist record offers the most colossal case of political carnage in history. And when this fact began to sink in with the French public, an apparently dry academic work became a publishing sensation, the focus of impassioned political and intellectual debate."

It was not the magnitude of the Communist tragedy that was news, he explained. The real news was "that at this late date the truth should come as such a shock to the public at large." People were shocked because there had been little information on what had been happening; specifically, no outrage over the Communist behavior raised by the academics or the news media. While massive outrage had been visited upon the Nazis for their crimes, next to none had been visited upon the Communists. There was, in effect, a 50 year double standard respecting Communism and Hitlerism. The much investigated Soviet social progress claimed victims on a scale that hay never aroused a scholarly curiosity at all proportionate to the magnitude of the disaster...'knowing the truth about the U.S.S.R.' has never been an academic matter."

This statement not only applies to the past, but to the present as well. The status of ex-Communist carries with it no stigma, even when unaccompanied by any expression of regret... Throughout the former Communist world moreover, virtually none of its responsible officials have been put on trial or punished. indeed, everywhere Communist parties, though usually under new names, compete in politics. One might add, that many of the former Communist leaders have been honored and glorified even more than most former Western dignitaries. Has any Western politician or academician or news commentator publicly charged any Communist or former Communist leader; aside from Stalin, Ceausescu, or Pol Pot, with crimes against humanity, war crimes, or atrocities?

Moreover in reality the public shock was not just due to the horrendous details of the Communist terror that had touched so many people's lives. Rather, for the first time the researchers dared to compare the crimes of Communism with those of Hitler's Nazism. They concluded the unthinkable, namely, that the Communist terror had been far worse in all respects. This break with the double standard was really what shocked people, especially many communists who had to take the conclusions seriously because they w ere based an Communist archives and because the researchers, as Malia pointed out in his foreword, were not right-wing fanatics. They were all "former Communists or close fellow-travelers."

Why the authorities placed so little attention on the Communist crimes is also a question the lead editor, Stephane Courtois, addressed in her introduction: "The extraordinary attention paid to Hitler's crimes is entirely justified. It respects the wishes of the surviving witnesses, it satisfies the needs of researchers trying to understand these events, and it reflects the desire of moral and political authorities to strengthen democratic values. But the revelations concerning Communist crimes cause barely a stir. Why is there such an awkward silence from politicians? Why such a deafening silence front the academic world regarding the Communist catastrophe, which touched the lives of about one-third of humanity on four continents during a period spanning eighty years?

In her attempt to explain the "cover-up" - her words - of the criminal aspects of Communism, Courtois posits three reasons, which although valid are hardly satisfying. The three reasons she lists are 1) the fascination with the whole notion of revolution (i.e. the fervor associated with revolution and social movement on a grand scale), 2) the participation of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazism, and 3) the single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as so unique as to preclude the comparable assessment of the crimes of Communism.

To better understand what lies behind the cover-up, consider what is implicit in the silence of politicians and academics. When the politicians are silent, there is a reason. They know that speaking out will not bring them good press and, indeed, may signal the end of their careers. Just consider what has happened to the careers of those whom the news media labeled "anti-Communist." Similarly, where the academics are not addressing an issue of such a magnitude. there is also a reason. In this case, there are several reasons: to wit, major foundations that sponsor their research - for example, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations - are not funding anti-Communist research, main-stream publishers are not publishing anti-Communist works, and the news media is not promoting the issue. Thus, it not just the silence of politicians arid academics, but a conspiracy of silence: that in addition to politicians and academies includes as driving forces the major tax-exempt foundations, establishment news media, mainline publishers, and the centers where policy is formulated.

When this larger group of those responsible for the silence is scrutinized, what emerges is the realization that this group of institutions and financial powers is precisely the same "interlock" that was identified by the Congressional Reece Committee in 1954 as having seized control of the centers of policy, education. and social science in the United States. The goals of this interlock, also spelled out in the Final Report of tile Reece Committee, were to replace the principles that America represented with socialist principles, and to undermine American pride and sovereignty to facilitate, as described by the head of the Ford Foundation, the merger of America with the Soviet Union. That is, their objectives were to replace republican democracy with democratic socialism, bring down national sovereignty, and bring about "convergence" or, in today's terms, "global governance."

It is necessary to keep silent about the crimes of Communism because the last thing any thinking people would want to do would be to merge "with a terrorist behemoth whose only legitimacy was that derived through unconstrained repression and organized crime. Thus, the interlock spearheaded the effort to hide the crimes of Communism. The interlock also financed the rewriting of American history and initiated other actions whose goal was to undermine American culture; that is, to bring America down to the Moral level of Communism, so that the people would see no real difference and, hence, no reason for not "joining arms" with the Communists or Socialists. The types of initiatives supported by the interlock and which were accompanied by parallel Soviet intelligence operations included the mass movement of illegal drugs into the United States, the promotion of drug use arid addiction, the attach on Western civilization and culture, the promotion of moral relativism, and the use of critical theory to undermine American institutions and values across the board.

What is as shocking, as the failure of the French public to have known about the crimes of Communism is the failure of the French academic researchers to understand what has been behind the "silence." Moreover, this silence is just one side of the coin. The other side is a stream of misrepresentations that were designed to fill the void left by the silence and about which. The Black Book seems strangely silent.

A typical example of these misrepresentations is the reporting by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Walter Duranty, who vas the New York Times' Moscow correspondent for ten years just prior to his being awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. He covered the Stalin "show trials" of 1928, 1934, and 1936 and portrayed them as nothing more tiara justice served. At the time of the forced starvation of roughly seven million Ukranians, Duranty chose to describe the reports on the atrocities as "Mostly bunk." In return for his "service," he received honor, prestige, aid numerous perks, including "women, caviar and opium."

In a mare recent context, Peter Schweitzer in his book on the Reagan Administration provides an insightful series of examples of pro-Soviet propagandizing by a variety of America's leading intellectuals, including Arthur Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, Lester Thurow and Strobe Talbott. Additionally, publicity is accorded those publications that mask the true nature of communism while those that have tried to tell the truth are given the silent treatment.

The Block Book is not the first exposé of Communist crimes instigated by the Communists themselves. Probably the best known exposé was Khrushchev s "Secret Speech" that was presented at the 20"' Party Congress in Moscow in February. 1956. This was Nikita Khrushchev's famous speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin and calling for fundamental changes in the Communist system. the speech was secret, but presumably due to the efforts of the CIA, a copy was obtained and released to the New York Times for publication.

As described by Courtois, Khrushchev's speech was "the first turning paint in the official recognition of Communist crimes." The speech represented ''a fundamental break in Communism's twentieth-century trajectory." Khrushchev's objectives, according to Western academics and policy pundits, were, first, to eradicate the evil of Communism in an effort to salvage the Communist regime and, second, to end the cult of the personality that was in force under Stalin, thus enabling Khrushchev to solidify his power. The speech shattered the prevailing image of Communism, It had this effect because it did not come from the West but from "the holy of holies in Moscow, the Kremlin." Moreover. no opponents were in evidence.

The speech had tremendous impact on the West. It ushered in the idea that Communism was not heartless - it could change, and the West could live peacefully with it and in so doing accelerate the change. This message is clearly present within the various editorials in establishment newspapers that followed in its wake.

There is, however, a very different explanation concerning the Secret Speech that was provided to me by a top-level Czech Communist official. Gen. Jan Sejna. who was an official delegate at the 20th Party Congress when Kluushchev gave his speech. This explanation is very instructive because it illustrates the difference between what one learns, based on "archival documentation" and what is really happening at the "state secret" level.

Sejna was first educated on the political action about to take place by Khrushchev himself at an informal gathering of Czech officials following the completion of the Czech 10th party Congress in June, 1954. Khrushchev explained how Stalin's policies had held back the Soviet Union and the world revolutionary process. To move forward, it was essential to obtain access to Western technology and financial assistance. To achieve this purpose, the Soviets were implementing a new policy of "peaceful coexistence."

At this point in the conversation, one of the members of the Czech Central Committee started to congratulate Khrushchev for introducing an era of world peace. Khrushchev cut him short and snarled, "Comrade, shut up. By peaceful coexistence, I do not mean pacifism. I mean a policy that will destroy Imperialism and make the Soviet Union and her allies the strongest economic and military power in the world."

Then Khrushchev continued. Because of the fears generated by Stalin, opportunities to obtain Western assistance had dried up. The only way to re-open the doors to Western assistance was to change the image of Communism by convincing the West that the Soviets had changed. The only way to do this, he explained, was "to place the blame for the past on the shoulders of the only person strong enough to bear the burden (that is, Stalin)." This had to be done to deceive the Western intellectuals into thinking the Soviet Union was changing, thus, opening the door to Western technology and finance.

The occasion for launching this deception was the 1956 Parry Congress. The "secret speech" was not secret. It was discussed well in advance by top Communist officials who would be attending the Congress. The Czechs were given a copy to discuss in December, over two months before the Congress was to convene. After the Congress, thousands of copies of the speech were printed and widely distributed within Party circles for discussion. While the CIA has described their acquisition of the speech as an intelligence triumph, it was not their triumph; their acquisition was planned as part of a Soviet 'deception operation.' The speech was only classified 'secret' to create the illusion of sensitivity to cause the. CIA to pay attention to it, 'The CIA did not obtain a copy through their superior "trade craft" but because the Soviets wanted there to have a copy. Then, to cause the CIA to release the. speech so that it could have the intended impact on policy, the Soviets arranged for the French to obtain a copy arid publish it in Paris. When the CIA learned the French had a copy and were about to release it, they suddenly decided to give their copy to the New York Times (which was where the Soviets wanted it published in the first place) so that they, the CIA, could claim credit for having obtained it first.

There was a strong break with the past. It is a simple matter to list a wide variety of changes that were introduced. To a strong degree, they were intended to salvage communism and make a break with certain past practices. However, the important point that Sejna's personal account brings out is that the changes were not changes in objectives or strategy, but only tactical shifts designed to enable the fundamental course of Communism to continue; that is, to destroy the Western imperialists and bring people everywhere under the yoke of Communism.

The speech was successful in opening the door to the West. In five years, there was so much economic assistance flowing into the Warsaw Pact that inflation had become a problem. Further insight into the effectiveness of Khrushchev's "peaceful coexistence" deception was provided by Khrushchev during a meeting of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Commission on 6-7 June 1962. Sejna recalled the event and summarized it as follows` "Khrushchev was introducing the speaker A. N. Kosygin at a dinner following the meeting. He explained that the time had come. The door was open. The Soviets had become the instruments of peace. This was now the best time to infiltrate the media and turn the enemy to march in our direction. Peaceful coexistence had its roots well established everywhere. The criticism of Stalin had forced the capitalists to accept peaceful coexistence. Now they were forced to avoid interfering in the revolutionary movement. The doors were open everywhere. The opportunities were everywhere - to influence the middle class, the technical elite, to isolate the right-wing forces, and to use the realistic thinking forces to give the realistic thinking politicians more power and money. There was more and better opportunities than ever before for propaganda and deception and better opportunities to steal technology, which is the best road to improving our technology. To our military forces, we can now give them an opportunity never before available - not only to catch up, but to go ahead of the West. Even if there are still some reactionary forces, we can not let them breathe, and the realistic forces will help us."

This raises further questions about The Black Book. Without question, it is a very scholarly work, well researched, and carefully documented. The problem with The Black Book is implicit in Courtois' introduction where she explains, "the entire [Communist] apparatus for keeping information under lock and key were designed primarily to ensure that the awful truth would never see the light of day." What has changed'? There are still tight restrictions on travel, there is no open access to archives, and asking questions about the wrong subjects has gotten journalists and businessmen killed. In the same sense that Khrushchev's Secret Speech released information to achieve a political purpose; who would suggest that the access granted the researchers of The Black Book is any different? In the same sense that Khrushchev's Secret Speoch is criticized because it did not deal with the total nature of the crimes, including Khrushchev's involvement himself, The Black Book is equally deficient in that it does not deal with any of the horrendous crimes the Communists committed against the free world or- with crimes that remain strategically important today.

Those archives on the crimes of the Communists against their own citizens that were opened are most interesting and historically valuable, but what political role do they serve? What do they really tell us that "any serious student of twentieth-century history," to use Prof Malia's words, did not already know? That is, the only real news is that the contents of The Black Book should come as a shock to anyone. Accordingly, might the role being served by the release of selected archives to various researchers be very similar, albeit in a different context, to the role Khrushchev's Secret Speech played in 1956?

What is abundantly clear is that the silence about the crimes of Communism continues. The Black Book does not in any respect break this silence any more than Kirushchev's Secret Speech did in 1955. Politicians and academics are still silent about the crimes of Communism that affect us today. As indicated in The Black Book, Communism is not under attack, nor are former Communist leaders. Indeed, they are honored, feted, given lucrative book contracts, and so on ad infinitum. Virtually none have been put on trial or punished, nor is there any outrage from the politicians or academics. As Professor Malia put it, the Communists "hoodwinked millions around the globe for decades, and so got away with murder on the ultimate scale/" Unfortunately, Malia's analysis goes astray at this point because the root problem is not so much one of the Communists hoodwinking millions, but compromise, corruption, and collaboration by the world's elite.

Ore of the most important points in The Black Book is that the Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts; they were criminal enterprises in their very essence: on principle, so to speak, they all ruled lawlessly, by violence, and without regard far human life. Communism was/is organized crime masquerading as a state. As in the case of organized crime, the only reason it flourishes and grows is not by hoodwinking people but by being politically protected. That protection comes in the form of the conspiracy of silence maintained by the elitists and the diversion/deceptions orchestrated by that same elitist interlock.

It was not the Communists that hoodwinked millions of people but the interlock of elitists in the West that hoodwinked the people through their conspiracy of silence. In the process, many people have been drawn into the interlock and now serve its interests, another brand of fellow-travelers, the result of self-deception and orchestrated compromise.

This is not a thing of the past. To the contrary, the most dangerous times are now and ahead because of the crimes of Communism in which elements of the interlock have collaborated in varying degrees but which are not examined or even mentioned in The Black Book. These are the most important crimes of Communism. The danger of The Black Book is that by focusing attention on the archives the researchers were provided, they have diverted attention away from what is really happening, that is of strategic importance--just as Khrushchev diverted attention away from real Soviet objectives with his deception of peaceful coexistence buttressed by revelations on the Crimes of Stalin.

Consider, for example, a small sampling of the types of crimes against the world by the Soviet Union that are nowhere to be found in The Black Book. First, since its inception, the objective of those at the top of the Soviet system was/is power and control at the global level. That is why Lenin organized the COMINTERN in 1920 to extend the Leninist terrorist revolutionary process throughout the whole world. Today, as a result of the silence, few people understand that the United Nations is predominately a Marxist organization that was designed to become a Soviet puppet operation from the beginning.

Every U.S. representative who was assigned to assist in its founding later was identified as a Communist agent. The destruction of national sovereignty and establishment of global governance has been a major objective of the Marxist Left since Karl Marx included that goal in the Communist Manifesto in 1948. This also was identified as a goal of the interlock identified by the Reece Committee in their final Report in 1953. The silence about the crimes of Communism is driven, in part, because of the need to hide the nature of the trap that has been set for all free nations, most importantly the United States, and, on a smaller scale, Europe's crown jewel and remaining bastion of freedom; Switzerland.

The world revolutionary process established by Lenin in 1920, went through many stages of disguise. Daring World War 1I, the COMINTERN disappeared in J 943, because it was making the Soviet allies too nervous. But, it was not abolished, as promised. Rather, it metamorphisized into the COMINFORM. That too was terminated in 1956 as part. of Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence deception. It did not disappear then either. It resumed under the guise of the International Department and Problems of Peace and Socialism, which was moved to Prague to farther the deception. At this time, the terms were also changed. What had been the "world revolutionary movement" became "wars of national liberation" and convergence. Today it is global governance and interdependency.

Because Communism itself is nothing more nor less than a state run criminal enterprise, the most important strategic intelligence operations - global crimes - initiated as part of Khrushchev's reforms and that are also absent in The Black Book include narcotics trafficking, organized crime, international terrorism and deception. The crimes against humanity then resulted from these operations alone, and which are still accumulating, may exceed the total carnage attributed to the Soviet Union in The Black Book.

Narcotics trafficking today has become the horrendous problem it is, not because of Colombian drug lords or American decadence, but because of the massive efforts of Communist intelligence services to push drugs into the United States, which were reinforced by American elitists and fellow-travelers who promoted drug use. Chinese intelligence started the operation off in 1949 and the Soviet intelligence services followed suit in 1960. Between 1960 and 1967 the Soviets, acting through their Cuban and Czech intelligence surrogates, had established narcotics operations throughout Latin America. The production and distribution. of cocaine on a large scale was also a Soviet operation. Even the manufacturing techniques were developed in East Germany. The Soviet production and distribution went operational in 1967, which is precisely when U.S. cocaine use started its upward climb. Today's drug trafficking is dominated by surrogates and direct operations run by these Communist and former Communist intelligence services. This is well known within intelligence circles, but is kept silent. There is almost no mention of the role of the Communist and former Communist intelligence services in international narcotics trafficking by politicians, academics, or the news media; but, it is well recognized by experts in the field. This has been one of the most damning of all the Communist crimes, but in The Black Book there's not even a hint of it or the deaths and despair it has caused.

The same is true of organized crime. Organized crime became a Soviet strategic intelligence operation in 1955 as part of Khrushchev's renovation of the world revolutionary movement. Their objective was to use organized cringe as a source of intelligence on politicians and banks and hence, as a tool for policy influence. Organized crime was also used as a scapegoat to blame for the narcotics problem: that is, to divert attention away from the real source of the problem, the Communist intelligence services. By 1960, the Soviets and their surrogate Eastern European intelligence services had placed more than 90 agents within the Italian Mafia. By the late 1960s, the Soviets had infiltrated nearly all organized crime operations and had over 350 of its own operations in various countries around the globe.

Czechoslovakia alone was involved in 50 organized crime operations by 1965. Almost the day after the Soviet Union "disintegrated," Russian organ-fled crime was recognized as a major problem in over 17 major U.S. cities and in all major cities in Europe. Russian organized crime is now recognized by law enforcement authorities as the most advanced and dangerous of all the organized criminal organizations. But, there is no mention of its continuing Moscow direction as though it suddenly, magically sprang into existence after the Soviet Union collapsed. The second most important organized crime gangs are the Chinese Triads that have been integrated with the government since Communism was established in China in 1949. There has also been a silence respecting their operations to move narcotics and designer drugs into the United States through Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Canada.

Today international organized crime has revenues that exceed $2 trillion per year, of which 50 percent is profit. The cut of the bankers and financial institutes that make it all possible is 15 to 20 percent. That buys a lot of corruption, influence, and silence and is why one of the major tasks of Soviet deception was "to prevent the spotlight of publicity from falling on our friends, the banks." Today, the Soviet and Chinese organized crime activities continue and, along with narcotics trafficking, are the most serious, damaging, and hardest of the Communist crimes to eradicate because of the tremendous corruption and compromise of top level Western politicians and the financial and legal elite that connect into the interlock and are more than just slightly interested in maintaining the silence regarding these crimes of Communism and in making certain that former Communist officials are honored and feted rather than arrested and put on trial. None of this is examined in The Black Book of Communism.

International terrorism was also adopted as a strategic intelligence operation and organized by the Soviets at the same time they embraced narcotics trafficking and organized crime. They are the granddaddy of today's terrorism. They recruited people, established training centers, organized safe houses, and provided financial support. The terrorists were used to destabilize countries, foment internal strife, instigate civil and 'religious' wars, and isolate the United States from the rest of the world.

Along this line, try to identify wars and serious insurrections over the past fifty yews that were not aided and abetted if not conceived and instigated by the Communists.

Deception is especially critical because of its role in hiding and/or misleading people about the nature of Communism and Communist policies. The CIA has often touted its expertise in deception. But, when it comes to understanding Soviet deception, the Agency is either inept or part of the silence. In a rare major study of deception undertaken in the raid-1980's, the Agency did not even know the top five Soviet state organizations responsible for planning and directing deception. To its credit, The Black Book has identified the tremendous danger associated with the manipulation of language - a key component in deception - that characterized the Soviet operation and which was a most important aspect of their crimes. But the strategic topic of deception itself and its accomplishments, especially critical to the conspiracy of silence, is nowhere to be found. There is no mention of "the banks" for example, that was one of the entities the Soviet deception was designed to protect because "they were our friends."

Other major operations that were undertaken to bring down the United States - and for that matter, other Western countries as well -- by the Communists operations that were aided and abetted by internal elitist American organizations and institutions, were to disrupt and change religious organizations, to destroy the culture, of which the most important component is the people's religious beliefs, to infiltrate the mainline "neutral" press and use it to advance Soviet policy, including the cultural destruction objectives.

The attack on the world's religions and people's belief in God was wide spread and has had great impact. As an example of the Soviet Communist. actions, "reactionary" clerics throughout Eastern Europe, and then Western Europe were eliminated during the 1950's. The Vatican was infiltrated and the Jesuits so controlled that in 1960's the Soviets decided to use them as a major tool in their efforts to destroy the Catholic Church from within. There were operational plans developed to render ineffective or turn every major denominational religion around the world, with special emphasis placed on major religions in the United States, including evangelical movements. Liberation Theology was not developed in Latin America, it was developed in Moscow in the 1960's, 'but there is nothing on this in The Black Book either. Indeed, neither Antonio Gramsci nor George Lukacks who identified the need to destroy Western culture and led the efforts to develop the strategy, especially its religious base, before the revolution could go forward, appear in the index.

These are just a few examples of the crimes of Communism against the whole world that surpass those presented in The Black Book. In terms of their importance to other countries and the continued relevance to the world today. There arc even more crimes that could be added to this list of examples; for example, the development of advanced technology chemical and biological warfare agents that U.S. political officials managed to keep hidden and still largely ignore. One of the most heinous examples where the silence is still active concerns the thousands of missing American POW's (anal prisoners of other nationalities and political prisoners as well) who were used as medical guinea pigs by the Soviets and Chinese in experiments that exceed in brutality those perpetrated by the Nazis and Japanese in World War II.

The point is that the crimes of Communism do not end with those perpetrated against their own citizens that are the focus of The Black Book. The crimes presented there are just those that for some reason (mid you better believe them was a definite reason), are revealed in the archives the Russian authorities decided to make available to the French researchers. The book is excellent in what it does, which is to process and report on this one aspect of Communist history. However, because it deals with the analysis of archives officially released, The Black Book can not be regarded as even a start or first step in the process of exposing the nature of the crimes of Communism. As in Khrushchev's Secret Speech, it just feeds us information that the Russians and other Communists want us to have.

The Black Book does not begin to even scratch the surface of the crimes of Communism that affect most of the people of the world today. This silence in The Black Book is not unique. One is hard pressed to find any discussion of the above Communist crimes against the world in any speeches of politicians or academic discourses, or establishment news media; or in research sponsored by the major tax-exempt foundations, or in government reports. This is just another example of how pervasive the silence regarding the crimes of Communists has been. It is not the absence of information but the deliberate suppression of information on one hand and on the other, the adamant refusal of those who control the information gateway to listen. Their general excuse is, "That's very interesting, but where is the documentation?" as though those in charge of the secrets in the Communist world ace about to allow access to secret archives that deal with matters of current strategic importance, beginning with the array of their most important intelligence operations of the present day and the atrocities and crimes against humanity that are still going on.

What The Black Book does that is really of the greatest value is not to expose the past crimes of Communism, but to alert readers to the silence on the part of politicians and academies about the crimes of Communism - a silence that continues today - and to the efforts of these same people to let all the guilty continue "to get away with murder on the ultimate scale." This is not just history. This is present-day current events.

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