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Stéphane Courtois | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Courtois in 2009 | |
| Born | (1947-11-25)25 November 1947 (age 78) Dreux,Eure-et-Loir, France |
| Education | Paris Nanterre University |
| Occupations | |
| Employer(s) | Paris Nanterre University French National Centre for Scientific Research Catholic Institute of Higher Studies |
| Known for | Research oncommunism and communist genocides |
| Notes | |
Director of the journalCommunisme, member of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Political Innovation (2009–2011) | |
Stéphane Courtois (French:[stefankuʁtwa]; born 25 November 1947) is a French historian and university professor, a director of research at theFrench National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), professor at theCatholic Institute of Higher Studies (ICES) inLa Roche-sur-Yon, and director of a collection specialized in the history ofcommunist movements andcommunist states.
The Black Book of Communism, a 1997 book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold millions of copies, and is considered one of the most influential and controversial books written about the history of communism in the 20th century andstate socialist regimes.[1][2] In the first chapter of the book, Courtois argued that Communism andNazism are similartotalitarian systems and that Communism was responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the 20th century.[3] Courtois' attempt to equate the two has been polemically effective, but controversial due to his numbers and his choice of which countries and events to compare, as well as beingrevisionist.[4][5]
Courtois is aresearch director at theFrench National Centre for Scientific Research, in theGéode (group of study and observation of democracy) atParis West University Nanterre La Défense. He is also a professor at theCatholic Institute of Higher Studies – ICES. He is editor of the journalCommunisme, which he cofounded withAnnie Kriegel in 1982, and part of theCercle de l'Oratoire think tank.
As a student, from 1968 to 1971, Courtois was aMaoist, but he later became a strong supporter ofdemocracy,pluralism, and therule of law.[6]
Courtois was an activist in the MaoistMarxist–Leninist organization Vive communism from 1968 to 1971, which changed its name in 1969 to Vive la Revolution withRoland Castro. At this time he directed the organisation's bookstore at rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in Paris. He describes himself as having been "anarcho-Maoist," but many "repented" of the extreme left and later became supporters of democracy and multi-party democracy and often anti-communists.[7]
Having taken legal studies and history, he became known in 1980 with the publication of his thesis,thePCF at war under the direction ofAnnie Kriegel. It was with her that he founded in 1982 the journalCommunisme to bring together anticommunist specialists on French communism. After the death of Kriegel, he became the main organiser of the magazine. He was appointed director of research at theFrench National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he was responsible for the "Group observations and studies of democracy" (GEODE). That period atCommunisme was seen as an extremely rich period for research of all kinds, the crucible of important work published in the 1980s.[8]
Courtois served as the historical consultant on the controversial 1985 documentaryDes terroristes à la retraite, which alleged a conspiracy by the PCF leadership to betray theFTP-MOI resistance group to the French police in 1943.[9] The film accusedBoris Holban of betrayingMissak Manouchian to theBrigades spéciales.[10] In his interview in the film, Courtois stated: "From summer 1943 on, the Communist Party clearly sought to affirm its superiority within the resistance. To that end, and to reinforce its prestige, it had to have bombings and other armed attacks to publicize. In Paris there was only one group available to carry out such attacks: the foreign combatants. The party leadership had the option of keeping them safe or keeping them in the fight. That was what happened, and we can safely say that they were sacrificed to serve the higher interests of the party".[9] The documentary set off an intense debate in France known asL’Affaire Manouchian.[10] During theaffaire, Courtois reversed his position. In the 1989 bookLe sang de l'étranger − les immigrés de la MOI dans la Résistance co-written withAdam Rayski and Denis Peschanski, Courtois cleared Holban of the allegation that he was a police informer and concluded that it was "brutally efficient police work" by theBrigades spéciales that led to the mass arrests of the FTP-MOI members in November 1943.[11] ''Le sang de l'étranger had a major impact on the historiography of the French resistance as the book established the majority of the attacks on German forces in the Paris area between April 1942-August 1944 were the work of the FTP-MOI, which had ignored by historians until then in order the make the Resistance appear more French.[12]
Following the fall of theBerlin Wall in 1989 and of the "Iron Curtain", theSoviet Union broke up in December 1991, the archives of theComintern were opened not only to Russian historians but also to western researchers.
The opening represented an opportunity for him to access unpublished sources to rewrite the history of the Comintern and of the Communist parties afflicted to it. Until that time, what was known of the Comintern was only what the Soviet leadership wished to be known, countered only by unverifiable assertions of their opponents. Courtois described the historiographical turning point as a "true revolution in documentation".[13][14]
For example, a historical study of the PCF had been made for decades not on genuine archival documents but on the basis of stories, such as memoirs published by PCF members, includingJacques Duclos, because the original PCF records were kept not at party headquarters in Paris, but in Moscow, in accordance with the central clauses governing their admission to the Comintern (conditions of admission to the Third International).
In 2006, Courtois wrote a book entitledCommunism in France: The revolution in documentation and revised historiography.
He made his first visit to the archives of the Comintern in Moscow in September 1992. Later he made three more visits, the last in December 1994. In 2009, at a conference, Stéphane Courtois said: "I did not go to promoteThe Black Book of Communism in Russia.... In any case, I do not go back again for quite some time.... I quickly became aware that I was under constant surveillance in the archives".[15]
Courtois gleaned some spectacular information from the archives and in deliberately provoking controversy, which led in the eyes of some at theCommunisme journal to a divisive position with the complementary scientific researches there. Since 1993, a large part of the editorial board ofCommunisme left the journal.[8]
If the historiographic production of Courtois before 1995 mainly concerned the PCF, afterward, it focused more on the Comintern and the history of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In theBlack Book, he was concerned with the criminal aspects of the actions of the Comintern. In his book onEugen Fried, which he cowrote withAnnie Kriegel in 1997, the emphasis was more on the control by the Comintern on the national communist parties and the mass anti-fascist organizations such asAmsterdam-Pleyel, Secours Rouge, and theUniversal Gathering for peace. In the foreword of Eugen Fried, he indicated that the project initiated in 1984–1985 had to be suspended in 1991 when the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were transferred to the State Archives of the Republic of Russia. "In 1992, Annie Kriegel and Stéphane Courtois were there in Moscow. They made several trips to the Russian capital and brought back thousands of pages on microfilm...."[16]
In a communication to theAcademy of Moral and Political Sciences, Courtois defended the thesis thatStalin was perfectly representative of the Soviet regime introduced in the1917 Revolution led byLenin, stating: "The fact remains that in the foundation phase of the system, from 1917 to 1953, it was the ideology that dictated the conduct of Lenin and then of Stalin.... Stalin was an authentic Bolshevik — pupil of the school of Leninism.... Stalin was not the obscure apparatchik described by Trotsky, but one of the direct collaborators of Lenin and among the most appreciated for his unwavering support of the leader, his sense of discipline, his composure and exceptional firmness of character, his determination, and his total lack of scruples or compassion in his actions".[17]
After the publication ofEugen Fried, Courtois led many joint editorial projects, such asA clean sweep From the past! History and Memory of Communism in Europe (2002), which came at the end of theBlack Book of Communism and provided additions to the book, mostly written by foreign authors, and theDictionary of Communism (2007). In 2008, he contributed to theBlack Book of the French Revolution, in a chapter devoted to the relationship betweenJacobinism andBolshevism.
In 2009, he returned again to the question of communism with the bookCommunism and totalitarianism, which was a collection of a series of his articles on the subject.
He has also expanded his work to include all totalitarian regimes. He organises many international conferences on this theme and maintains a collection of theÉditions du Seuil and the Éditions du Rocher.
A student of Kriegel, Courtois said that his bookCommunism and Totalitarianism (2009) is built on the model of several books by her, includingThe Bread and the Roses: foundations for a history of socialism (1968) andFrench communism in the mirror (1974).[13] The methodology, developed by her and adopted by him, consisted of an accumulation of stages of thought of the researcher in the form of texts that are grouped by topic and published regularly.[13]
Taking up the concept of a "history workshop "developed by the historianFrançois Furet, in his eponymous book published in 1982, Stéphane Courtois said that "the serious historian is an artisan who constantly works on the job, because he is dependent on sources, archives, etc.... And of course, these sources, archives, they are constantly changing.[13] Thus, the evolution of this process permits a construction of a united vision more comprehensive and nuanced than at the start.[13]
After many contributions and publications on various aspects of communism, both in France and internationally, Courtois participated in theBlack Book of Communism, a project published in November 1997, where he was the coordinator and wrote the preface. Also participating in this work wereNicolas Werth (professor of history and a researcher at the Institute of Modern History (IHTP) where he specialises in the Soviet Union), Jean-Louis Panné (historian and editor atGallimard, also the author of a biography ofBoris Souvarine), Karel Bartosek (researcher at CNRS and editor of the journalNew Alternative), Andrzej Paczkowski (Professor of Political Science and member of the board of the archives for the Ministry of Interior). Courtois himself was the co-author of an article on the Comintern.
The book takes stock of the crimes committed by the various forms of power exercised by communism. The introduction by Courtois is entitled "The Crimes of Communism", which was responsible for the deaths of nearly 100 million human beings.[18]
"The crimes of communism have not been subject to a legitimate and normal assessment from a historical or a moral point of view. Without doubt this is here one of the first times that we try an approach to communism in questioning whether its criminality is both central and global to its existence".[19]
The book is part of an essentialist vision of communism developed byErnst Nolte that it would have as its essence a general criminal nature.[20]
One of the contributors to theBlack Book,Nicolas Werth criticised Courtois for having, in his preface, the figure of 20 million economic or political victims of socialism in the USSR while they did not number more than 15 million victims. Another contributor, Jean-Louis Margolin noted that he had never talked about 1 million deaths in Vietnam contrary to what was claimed by Courtois in his text.
How to calculate in an unbiased fashion the numbers of disparate victims who died in civil wars, economic crises or even common criminals on five continents by various regimes for more than 70 years, was also discussed. The authors of theCentury of Communism (2000), led by Claude Pennetier, challenged the uniqueness of communism underpinned by theBlack Book "If it is a presupposition that this book would definitely wish to call in question, as well as prejudice, it contains some truth. It is the uniqueness of what is called the "communism of the 20th century. From "Past of an Illusion,[21] "Crimes of Communism,[22] the first error is the non-critical use of a single article and will consequently reduce Communism to "one" fundamental property.[23] "The authors of this book did not have much in common with theHungary ofJános Kádár and theCambodia ofPol Pot.
It is less the number of deaths caused by dictatorships who claim to be communist as the comparison with Nazism that has caused controversy in France, which has very similar terms to the famous "quarrel of historians" who tied up Germany in the mid-1980s because of an article by Ernst Nolte.[24] Some writers and commentators were surprised that Courtois made the comparison with Nazism a theme of part of the preface, when no contributions referred to the question.
Courtois raised the comparison between Nazism and Communism as an issue to be dealt with by historians and called for the establishment of an equivalent of theNuremberg tribunal to try those Communists responsible. He compared the organisation of the two movements, and the number of victims attributed to communism to the number of deaths from Nazism. He draws a parallel between Nazi "race genocide" and what he calls, following Ernst Nolte, "class genocide".[25] For its supporters, Communism was a humanist and egalitarian ideology unlike Nazism and many historians, starting with some authors of the book, expressed their disagreement with Courtois. In particular,Nicolas Werth said that "the more you compare communism and Nazism, the more obvious are the differences".[26]
According to Annette Wieviorka, director of research at CNRS, "Stéphane Courtois shows the comparison between the acute awareness of the Jewish genocide and that of Communism which is a tissue of falsehoods and approximations", highlightened that theHolocaust was not to become a privileged object of historical research until the 1970s and imposed itself on thecollective memory only in the 1980s. He also citesFrançois Furet, who would have written the foreword had he not died prematurely, who said that the Genocide of Jews had "the awful distinction of being an end in itself".[27]
Despite repeated denials of a conflict of interest, some saw this comparison as assimilation pure and simple and as such have seen fit to denounce it. The journalist Benoît Rayski accused some intellectuals, including Stéphane Courtois, Alain Besançon,Ernst Nolte andJean-François Revel, of wanting to confound the West about the issue of Nazism to promote their ownanticommunism.[28]
Courtois's works, especiallyThe Black Book of Communism, were a continuation of the "turn" in historiography begun in 1995 with the publication of the essay by the excommunist activist historian and member of the Communist Party from 1947 to 1959,François Furet dealing with the "communist illusion" and entitledThe Past of an Illusion. Essay on the Communist idea in the 20th century.[29]
Furet had also agreed to write the preface toThe Black Book of Communism but he died in July 1997.[30]
For Courtois, communism is a form of totalitarianism, and the same for Italian fascism and German Nazism. In that sense, he opposedHannah Arendt andGeorge L. Mosse. The first matches the birth of totalitarianism in Russia with the rise of Stalin (not Lenin); from there, it reduced to communist totalitarianism in a very short time to "Stalinism". Historiography based on this theory from Hannah Arendt, designed in the 1950s, is, according to Courtois, the mainstream in the teaching of the totalitarian phenomenon in France in the 21st century but Courtois says "campaign" against the historiographic orientation in which he opposes the idea of a totalitarian communism whose beginnings are the publication ofWhat to do? by Lenin in 1902.
This thesis is outlined in his publicationCommunism and totalitarianism (Perrin, 2009) which dealt with the subject chronologically (thematic in the last installment) in a four-part series of discussions dedicated to the totalitarian regimes in Europe:
Courtois mainly described this thesis in his biography:Lenin, the inventor of totalitarianism (Perrin, 2007). It is included in a chapter onCommunism and totalitarianism (Perrin, 2009).
According to Courtois, there is a clear dichotomy in the history of communism between a "positive memory" of communism in Western Europe (France, Italy, Spain, etc..) and a "tragic memory" in Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, etc.).[15] This theory was developed in the book that followed theBlack Book of Communism and is entitledMake a clean sweep of the past! History and Memories of Communism in Europe (2002).[31]
In France, the "positive memory" would be echoed in the social conquests of the Popular Front, the participation of the communists in theInternational Brigades during theSpanish Civil War, the resistance to the German occupation duringWorld War II, and the Soviet victory over Nazism, which Courtois called "the universal appeal of Stalingrad" (the Soviet victory at Stalingrad marked the "turning point of the war" in favour of the Allies). He took here the concept coined by Furet, the "universal appeal of October" in reference to the acclaim around theOctober Revolution.
To oppose this was a "tragic memory", which, in Poland, comes from its annexation after the Nazi-Soviet pact and theKatyn massacre, in the Baltic countries, from annexations by the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1990, and in Romania, from annexation by the Soviet Union of the regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and the establishment of a long dictatorship (45 years). According to the 1991 Commission of Historians' Report on Romania, nearly two million people were killed and nearly 300,000 people were deported to labour camps either within Romania itself, or to Siberia or Kazakhstan.[32] This deep trauma resulted in Romania, by the creation in 1993 at Sighet, a prison used by the Romanian communist regime, a place of memory (research institute, library, museum and summer university) unique of its kind: the "Memorial to the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance" (Memorial to the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance) (Memorialul Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei). Conference proceedings and discussions supported by Stéphane Courtois during four visits made to the memorial, and the Centre for Studies of Bucharest, were published in November 2003 under the titleCourtois The Sighet(Fundatia Academia Civica)[33] and republished in 2006 (Liternet).[34]
In his speech at the Summer University at Sighet entitled "The Lost Honour of the European Left," Courtois denounced the rejection by more than two-thirds of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of a Resolution and a "Recommendation concerning the condemnation of crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes", 25 January 2007.[35][36][37]
According to Courtois, the rejection was representative of the phenomenon that Alain Besançon described in 1997 as "historical amnesia andhypermnesia" (amnesia for non-Nazi crimes, hypermnesia for Nazi crimes[38]) resulting in a denial of the "memory of the victims of other regimes other than Nazi" in some Western European states. It also prevents the emergence of what he calls a "reunification memorial", which could exist,[39] with commemorations and educational activities taking place in common.[15]
He is a member of the Circle of Oratory and is on the editorial board of the journalBrave New World. It is a source of public support for the Afghan war of 2001, against "Islamic fundamentalism".[40]
In the bookIraq, and me. Another look at a world at war,[41] Stéphane Courtois drew a parallel between the communist past and the Islamism of today. Intellectually pro-American,[42] he believes in his famous speech to the UN,Dominique de Villepin was a victim of reactions from Soviet propaganda in France. Having overemphasised "U.S. go home" for fifty years, it leaves its traces.[43] Following the war in Iraq, he found that the abuses committed by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison was an "inevitable sideline of war".[44]
Stéphane Courtois supported the authorGerard Chauvy in the trial that determined part of a biography of theFrench Resistance leadersRaymond andLucie Aubrac was public defamation.[45][46][47] François Delpla believed that in the context of this case, "the desire to finish with communism" had been lost on Courtois to the extent that he was running with the wolves against Aubrac, during a campaign questioning the quality of the resistance.[48]
In France, Courtois has been a historian challenged by a number of his colleagues.
The historianHenry Rousso (Vichy, a past that does not pass, 1996) criticized him for simplifying all militant or communist sympathizers as accomplices of the crimes ofStalinism and, by extension, considered all to be conditionally allied with communist forces or with the Soviets as blind accomplices of Stalin.
The historianJean-Jacques Becker believed that his research was sensationalist in nature: "This is afighter who wants to make historyeffective, that is to say exactly the opposite of history…."[49]
In 2006, in the magazineBrave New World, he published an articleFamine in Ukraine (Holodomor): you said "denial"? (republished on the website of the historical journalArkheia[50]) in which he publicly accused the French historian,Annie Lacroix-Riz of denying theHolodomor in Ukraine in 1932–1933.
The famine was reported in theWestern world in 1933 by Welsh journalistGareth Jones and in 1935 byBoris Souvarine,[citation needed] and many years later byAlexander Solzhenitsyn in 1973 inThe Gulag Archipelago. However, after a carefully sanitized visit in the summer of 1933 byPrime Minister of FranceÉdouard Herriot, the latter declared there to be no famine.[50] The great famine was confirmed by the opening of Soviet archives in the early 1990s.
According to him, Annie Lacroix-Rice tried to downplay the event as one of "scarcity" a famine in which several million people died.[51] This article was issued in response to the creation by Annie Lacroix-Riz, of "a website to appeal to his colleagues to mobilize against an unspeakable lie that ran the world for seventy years: No, ladies and gentlemen, there was no famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933, much less a famine that would have caused millions of deaths, and especially not a famine organized by the Soviet regime itself".[50]
Subsequently, in 2007 and in 2008 respectively, Marxist historians Annie Lacroix-Riz andJean-Jacques Marie [fr] criticized Stéphane Courtois for having expressed his views in an interview with theextreme right monthlyLe Choc du mois [fr].[52][53][54]
In 2009, he criticized the Trotskyist historian Jean-Jacques Marie for the contents of chapter entitled: "1922: the year of serenity", published in his biographyLenin, 1870–1924 (Balland, Paris, 2004).[13] Courtois accuses Jean-Jacques Marie for apologising for Lenin for whom 1922, on the contrary, was "the year of transition to paranoia".[13] This showed itself on the one hand, by the note from Lenin to the Politburo on 19 March 1922 in which he wanted to use theSoviet famine of 1921–1922 to destroy theRussian Orthodox Church: "It is precisely now when the famine-struck regions eat human flesh, and thousands of corpses litter the roads, that we need to enforce the confiscation of church property with savage energy and most unforgivingly, and crush any hint of resistance, with such brutality that it will be talked about for decades".[55] This "paranoia" is also reflected in the Terror against the Socialist-Revolutionaries (death sentences, gulag, etc..) as well as the expulsion (or sometimes internal exile) of the Russianintelligentsia.[13] This last event is described by him in the chapter, "Lenin and the destruction of the Russian intelligentsia", in his bookCommunism and totalitarianism (pre-published inSocietal magazine No. 55 to 59): "the deportees were warned that any illegal return to Russia would automatically entail the death penalty".[56] On 25 May 1922, Lenin addressed himself to Stalin in the following terms: "hundreds of these gentlemen must be expelled without mercy. We are going to clean up Russia once and for all.... They should all be turned away from Russia".[56] In September 1922, Lenin justified his act toMaxim Gorky: "the intellectuals, the lackeys of capitalism, think they are the brains of the nation. In reality, they are not the brain, they are crap".[57]
Although sometimes contested in France, his works are generally more favourably received abroad, especially in the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe.
As proof of his ideological influence, an important part of his work has been translated into Romanian (The Black Book of Communism,Such a long night,Dictionary of communism,Communism and Totalitarianism,The blind spot in European history, etc.).
Since 2001, he has been the rector of the Summer School of the Sighet Memorial.[58] The visits to Romania are the project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[59]
In 2000,Kommunismi must Raamat the Estonian version of theBlack Book of Communism received political support by being prefaced by the President of EstoniaLennart Meri. The preface was titled "Shadows over the world" ("Varjud maailma Kohal"). At the same time, the Prime MinisterMart Laar participated in this collective work by signing an additional chapter of 80 pages "Estonia and Communism" ("Eesti ja kommunism").
He was awarded the honorary title of DoctorHonoris Causa by the Free International University ofMoldova (ULIM), in Chisinau, on 8 July 2011.[60]
Besides his career as a historian, he is a specialised publisher who has published authors such asErnst Nolte or Reynald Secher.
Since 1995, he has been Director (co-director from 1982 to 1995) and co-founder, with Annie Kriegel in 1982, of the journalCommunisme at theUniversity Press of France andThe Age of Man.
He was co-founder, withNicolas Werth in 1995, of the collection "Archives of communism" from editions du Seuil.
He was the founder and director from 2002 to 2008 of the collection "Democracy or totalitarianism" from Éditions du Rocher. This collection was transferred toÉditions du Cerf in 2010.[59]
He has been the founder and director since 2010 of the collection "Political Deer"Éditions du Cerf.[61]
Most of his works were written in French, but some have been directly published in a foreign language (English, German, etc.), and some have been translated into foreign languages (The Black Book of Communism has more than 30 translations).
(In collaboration: "in coll."; under his direction: "dir.")
Bearing in mind the charged nature of the subject, it is polemically effective to make such comparisons, but it does not seem particularly fruitful, neither morally nor scientifically, to judge the regimes on the basis of their 'dangerousness' or to assess the relationship between communism and Nazism on the basis of what the international academic community calls their 'atrocities toll' or 'body count'. In that case, should the crimes of all communist regimes, in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and other countries where communism is or has been the dominant party, be compared to the Nazi regime's massacre of six million Jews? Should the Nazi death toll also include the tens of millions of people who the German Nazi armies and their supporting troops killed during the Second World War? Not even Courtois' analytical qualification, that ranking the two regimes the same is based on the idea that the 'weapon of hunger' was used systematically by both the Nazi regime and a number of communist regimes, makes this more reasonable, since this 'weapon' on the whole played a very limited role in the Nazi genocide in relation to other types of methods of mass destruction, and in relation to how it was used by communist regimes.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), conference 4 April 2005.Brochures, freely and legally downloadable in PDF
