Communism : A History

Rating:
Summary: Reactionary Propaganda
Review: this book is completely exagerrated and dishonest. in attempting to write a history of communism, the author has ignored the fact that THERE HAS NEVER BEEN AN OUNCE OF COMMUNISM ON THIS EARTH! has Pipes read any of te original marxist texts? I doubt it. if he had he would know that every "socialist country" since the triumph of Stalinism in the Soviet Union (the dissolution of the Bolshevik party and tyhe workers democratic councilss, called Soviets)from Mao to Vietnam to Korea the Eastern Europe has been merely a brtal Stalinst dictatorship, that merely exchanges one form of oppression for another. as for the section on the "Red Terror" and the exclusion of opposition parties, has pipes forgotten that the Bolsheviks were in the middle of a civil war? what government can be expected to form a government with the people that are making war on it, and sabotaging its resources? Even so, there are many Marxists who are and were against the Red Terror. Lenin himself said that after the civil war ALL parties were to be allowed in the governemnt. for a history of how and why socialism was betrayed read the revolution bwetrayed by Leon Trotsky and From Lenin to Stalin by Victor Serge, both members of the communist opposition murdered/exiled by Stalin.
open your eyes, people.

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Summary: brief unnecessary flaw (failure to be totally honest) hurts
Review: Overall a fantastic book, but one caveat.

Like a reviewer below, I was disappointed by Pipes's gloss on Chile and the Nixon's administration's role in installing the dictator Pinochet.

The story of the millions slaughtered and generations crushed by brutal, kitsch-coated regimes in thrall to a psuedo-science (Marxism, Leninism) deserves a book that is completely honest. By not conceding (or even acknowledging the ambiguities while arguing for a new take on)this seemingly clearcut excess of the United States's anti-Communist struggle in Latin America -- which, alas, resulted in a fourteen year dictatorship complete with torture and killings -- Pipes does himself and his readers a great disservice.

At a time when old hacks like Noam Chomsky are still pushing their tawdry goods to gullible college students it's important to answer with the clear truth: that no moral equivalency can be made between the evils of communism and the West. That said, Pipes can and should be totally honest. Yes, the U.S. did some things that might now seem dubious and, truth be told, ugly and mistaken in Latin America, but this was at the height of the Cold War and can in no way be compared to the horrors of communist societies.

Such a concession would have given greater credence to the rest of the book. What's more it would have been true.

Instead Pipes gets to Central and South America and sort of fudges the events of 1974 in a very brief, not entirely honest, cursory passage. He should have given his audience more credit.

This is an excellent overview of horrific and still relevant history. Far superior to Martin Amis's recent tome on Stalin for one. It's a shame the author briefly flinched and, for reasons unknown, didn't trust the full and absolute truth of the past ravaged century to be a damning enough.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: This is probably the best 167 pages of history ever written. It is certainly the best I have ever read. Pipes is a master of the English language with a encyclopedic knowledge of European/Russian/Soviet history. He manages to cover a very grand sweep of history in this slim volume. It is definitely a "page turner." I opened the book before going to bed and ended up staying up until I had finished the whole thing.
Also contains many references for further reading on the various subtopics noted in the text.

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Summary: The failures and oceans of blood caused by Communism.
Review: Pipes does a bang up job of placing Communism as a brutal system. As a conservative myself, I find his analysis not always fair. Pipes makes the comparison that Lenin was worse than Stalin, and his primary motives were revenge when he first revolted against the Tsarist system. I think some historians would find some fault with this analysis. I believe Lenin was less brutal than Stalin. Also his comments about the overthrow of Allende suggest that the Armed Forces coup de etat was legitimate. WOW, that is certainly a stretch. His analysis on Castro and Mao were on target.
This is a very readable summary of communism. I would just warn the reader that some of views of Professor Pipes are very conservative, and may not be credible to those who are interested in a even handed approach to history.

Rating:
Summary: interesting, but somewhat disingenuous
Review: Pipes has written a scathing critique of communism, and has made much use of ample ammunition - it would be difficult to write much good about Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. But Pipes is disingenuous in his critique of communism in other countries - he completely ignores the effect of US policies of espionage and economic destabilisation in these countries. In Chile, in particular, he ignores American influence (Kissinger catering to Pepsi's whims?) in toppling a democratically-elected, albeit communist, government. He ignores the brutality of the Pinochet regime - and lack thereof in the Allende government - which would contradict his assertion that all communist governments must engage in brutality. He also cites Cuba's high per capita income during Batista's reign - while ignoring the fact that most of that income was concentrated in the hands of criminals and not with the people. Communism is an easy target, but Pipes' argument is weakened by his failure to give any perspective on the regimes that came before and after it.

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Summary: It's high time we went
Review: Richard Pipes does a bang-up job of telling this story of the Religious Left and the Communist menace it became.

It's important to realize that Communism as a religion grew faster and outstripped, in terms of population covered, both Islam and Christianity. The big difference is it offered heaven on earth versus heaven in the hereafter. It also promulgated class-warfare by citing the deception that the poor are poor solely because the rich oppress them. By offering the poor the opportunity to expropriate the assets of those better off them themselves they managed to fan the fertile flames of envy. This gave the Communists some basis of support from all those whose most fervent wish was to have their neighbor's cow die.

Two items I found remarkable were one, that the size of the nomenklatura under the Bolshevicks was 1 1/2% of the population of the USSR which was exactly what it was under the Tsar, and two, that not one of these Communist criminals has been tried for crimes against humanity. One is constantly reminded of the Holocaust and regaled with footage of the Nazi (National Socialist Party of Germany) leadership being brought to justice, but we see relatively nothing about justice for those murdered by the Communists. Why?

Pipes certainly knows his subject matter and his references. Only the most hardened of minds can posit otherwise. We will only be rid of the remnants of this virulent and deadly religious philosophy when opinion leaders of the world under go the shock of recognition and experience the resulting tides of agonizing self reappraisal.

A fabulous book.

Rating:
Summary: A History of Evil Explained
Review: Richard Pipes' "Communism: A History" explains the origins of communism, its development as a theory by Marx and Engels to its implementation by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and others. It was the most evil of all ideologies, one that enslaved, impoverished and murdered great masses of people. As many as one hundred million people died under Communism in the Twentieth Century. Pipes explains Communism's history through its various leaders, stratagems, factions and episodes, to its eventual demise with the end of the Soviet empire. The book is a fast read and I found it fascinating.

Pipes tells how Marxism was coercive and murderous from the start, with Lenin summarily hanging farmers who refused to hand over their grain. Stalin was a megalomaniac who actually set quotas for the arrest and execution of thousands, merely to induce terror among the populace. Like all major Communist leaders, he believed that humans were expendable fodder for the Revolution, and the current generation could be sacrificed for the new Communist Man. "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs," goes an old proverb. As Pipes points out, in spite of many broken eggs, there was no omelet. Instead of accomplishing what idealists wanted - to feed and house everyone, wipe out hunger and need - Communism achieved quite the opposite. Except for the ruling Party elite, or "nomenklatura," the populace was impoverished. Millions starved. Many more were oppressed, imprisoned and enslaved.

Eventually, Soviet Communism collapsed from its own internal contradictions. Without the freedom to own property and make a profit, there is no incentive for human progress, no need to develop and improve technology. Communist countries soon fell far behind the West economically and technologically. Those Marxist governments who survived did so through market reform and the addition of capitalist incentives. The few remaining leaders retain their inherited Marxist systems solely to hold on to power. They do not do so from any belief in Marx's discredited theories.

I also appreciated Pipes' description of Salvador Allende's downfall in Chile. Allende's pro-Marxist regime was ousted by the Chilean military in 1973. The current dogma among campus leftists is that the CIA arranged Allende's ouster. The truth is that his own Chamber of Deputies voted 81 to 45 to remove him after economic chaos and widespread strikes had paralyzed the country.

Rating:
Summary: Nice, tight treatment of bad idea whose time passed
Review: Pipes does a nice job of encapsulating what is rapidly becoming ancient history. Having made several visits to Russia and Chile in the past ten years, this book helped explain for me some of the history and mystery of both countries. Students should read this brief (160 pages) volume. You will better understand the marvels of capitalism by understanding the absurdity of communism.

Communism is based on the abolition of private property and all the Marxist theory, "science" and predictions have seriously missed the mark, misfired, or, sadly, made life miserable for millions of people. While Lenin wanted to control the "commanding heights", Daniel Yegin's recent book and PBS series of the same name shows that free markets and "liberal" democracy have triumphed repeatedly over the past century. Private property is not the cause of poverty. It may be the cure for poverty. People, by nature, want to acquire and own things and people, just like corporate capitalists, want to make a profit (earn more than they spend). Communism turns this simple notion on its head, and several tens of millions of deaths later, this sad phase of history is disappearing.

Yes, capitalism is imperfect. But what works better, communism or capitalism? Just ask the people who have lived under both political systems and the answer is obvious.

To quote Pipes: "Communism was not a good idea that went wrong; it was a bad idea."

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Summary: If you like a nice story (or just good old propaganda)...
Review: I find it disheartening to see someone of such outstanding credentials as Pipes put forth a work so lacking in critical, unbiased analysis. I do not claim any expertise on Soviet/Russian history, yet found his examination of Communism's rise and fall in the Soviet Union to be utterly lacking. His book is filled with exaggeration and reactionary ideology. A good deal of what he presents as fact is derived from sources that are shaky, at best, and filled with unadulterated speculation and opinion. His miniscule discussion of Communism in Latin America is beyond ridiculous. In mentioning Chile, he actually purports that the removal of Allende from office was due, in part, to the ability of the opposition's ability to organize resistance, and that "as its numbers swelled, it easily toppled the revolutionary regime" (151). This is ridiculous, as the Pinochet regime came into power as a military junta (just a few or the higher-ups in the military) that met in secret, and with US support (CIA), actually unleased all of Chile's military might upon the presidential palace and began a campaign of horror that can not be excused, no matter what rhetoric (and indeed it was rhetoric) accompanied Allende's regime. If one is to write any historical, political, social, or economic analysis, it is imperative that a basic, unbiased understanding of fact is present. Pipes has no such understanding when it comes to Latin America, which leads me to question his credibility in Soviet History as well. That so many reviewers wandered into this book blindfolded, with little conception of critical reading is sad. Granted, "communism" has done little good in Russia, China, Cambodia, and North Korea, but we must not lose perspective. Pipes needs to check his Cold War baggage at the door, and rework this book of great potential.

Rating:
Summary: Sandinistas my a**
Review: There is one reviewer who distorts the Nicaragua campaign.
He fails to mention the reason why the Sandinistas are so unpopular. They were a murderous bunch of thugs who the US supported over the Somoza regime after it went bad. When the US realized we had picked a group of thugs even worse than the Somoza we choose the Contras, whose former members are considered freedom fighters by the Nicaraguans, unlike the Sandinistas who are despised for their utter brutality.

Anyway besides a "American Hating" reviewer on here, the book is the best I have ever read. The book is beautiful.