Anyone curious about the Great Leap Forward and the mass famine that resulted should read this wonderful review of Jasper Becker’s book Hungry Ghosts.
I especially recommend it to those who see Mao’s role in the tragedy as a passive one, and to those who see the famine that killed tens of millions as a a kind of accident, a by-product of a well-intentioned cause (“Oops!”).
There are some generous excerpts from the book, and the comments are good, too, with several pointing out how the number of dead is almost certainly higher — way higher — than 30 million, the usual number being bandied about.
The writer draws some intelligent parallels between Mao’s famine of 1958 with Kim Jong Il’s famine of today. Depressing and horrifying beyond words.
Link via Radio Free China.
1
By Edgar Snow
“I especially recommend it to those who see Mao’s role in the tragedy as a passive one, and to those who see the famine that killed tens of millions as a a kind of accident, a by-product of a well-intentioned cause (“Oops!”).”
–OK, I’m calling bullshit on this. There is no serious scholar or China watcher who holds this view. Who do you have in mind here other than irrelevant ‘friends of China’ circa 1970s?
November 15, 2003 @ 2:05 pm | Comment
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By James Versluys
There is a standard in hisorigraphical accounts of massacres and mass starvations to somehow excuse the communists. What you note about people willing to believe that the millions dead were somehow an accident is a common one.
I jokingly referred to Orlando Figes account of the Soviet’s nastiness the ‘Brittany Spears “Oops I did it again” theory of Soviet massacres’.
November 15, 2003 @ 4:11 pm | Comment
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By richard
Edgar, did I ever say any “serious scholar” said it? I am referring to conversations I have had with real people, bright, educated people who vigorously challenge the breadth of this tragedy and who also argue it was not an act of evil — Mao never meant for those 40 million peasants to die.
November 15, 2003 @ 5:36 pm | Comment
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By James Versluys
65 million, actually. If you consult the major studies out now (‘Le Livre Noir du Communisme’, Hungry Ghost author), along with megadeath counters (Brian Caplan of of George Mason U., Richard Pipes of Hoover) , you’ll find a consistant thought of the higher numbers. I named varied sources, too, like the Black Book (Livre Du Communisme’) on the leftist side, on over rightward.
On the side of the apologists, those like
Eric Hobsbawm and Noam Chomsky are pretty much getting the short shrift from history now. Salud.
November 17, 2003 @ 11:55 am | Comment
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By richard
Thanks James — some readers really get upset at the notion that Mao could do anything so naughty, and I have had some exasperating arguments, trying to convince them that Mao was not an innocent bystander.
November 17, 2003 @ 12:29 pm | Comment
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By Living In China
China news round-up
It’s been a while and now it’s time to put…
November 20, 2003 @ 3:15 am | Comment