Le siècle des communismes (review)

Most collective works of this sort emerge from conference papers, pay tribute to a leading figure in the field or derive from externally funded research projects. The editors of Le siècle des communismes acknowledge from the outset that they march to a different drummer. They have been stimulated, not to say provoked, to organize a collective response to the publication of Le livre noir du communisme that challenges its basic premises. Thus the two books should be read in tandem. Together they represent yet another episode in the long and bitter quarrel among French intellectuals over the nature of communism and its Soviet avatar going back to the days when Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty faced off against Albert Camus and Raymond Aron. This time the debate is on both sides more historical and less philosophical, often based on archival research and, rather a novelty for French intellectuals, carried on with the assistance of their "Anglo-Saxon" colleagues. In some ways, the French debate is similar to that which has taken place in the U.S. over the past decade. It is arguable whether the French or American side of the debate divides the participants more sharply into two camps. In both cases there have been crossovers, retreats from exposed positions, and involvement by auxiliaries (not to say fellow-travelers) who associate themselves loosely with one or the other of the warring parties.

When it first appeared in 1997, Le livre noir created something of a sensation in France and Eastern Europe.¹ More than 200,000 copies were sold in France and a total of 700,000 throughout the world. The tone was set by Stéphane Courtois, who in the preface indicted communism as a criminal enterprise, a view, as it turned out, that was not shared by all the contributors, notably Nicolas Werth.² As the contributors to Le siècle point out, Le livre noir is related ideologically to several other recent studies of communism, in particular, those by François Furet and Ernst Nolte, who on at least one occasion joined forces.³ The main agenda of Le siècle, then, is to demonstrate that contrary to the views of Courtois, Furet, and Nolte, communism was not simply a criminal enterprise, a great illusion, a unitary phenomenon, or the cause of Nazism and its twin, but something more varied and complex.

The organization of Le siècle suggests careful planning and an attempt at comprehensiveness. The editors have apportioned their tasks among 16 other contributors grouped into four main sections. Each section is under the general supervision of one or several of them. The first is historiographical, "the interpretations of communismes" (the plural is everywhere stressed); the second is devoted to the main historical periods of communismes; the third to the international aspects of parties and individuals; and the fourth to three major topics in the debate over the significance of the communismes. Each section is broken down in turn into subtopics and then further into chapters. But any organizational scheme depends in the final analysis on the willingness of the authors to accept its logic and adopt their contributions to the overall requirements of the enterprise. To be sure, we do not have the letters of instruction as a guide to what was expected. But what we get is basically three different kinds of chapters: a research article, a synthesis of the secondary literature, and a think piece. All are legitimate, but jumbled together they give an uneven quality to what might have been a more coherent and well-knit book.

More important, how comprehensive is this compilation? There is an effort to deal with almost all the major communist movements in one way or another. India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan are absent, Latin America receives an abbreviated treatment, and even East Central Europe is given short shrift. The...