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Communism & The Intellectuals
WAIS vice-chairman David Pike of the American University of Paris has sent
me a memo which again shows how different the French perspective is from
the American one. Robert Conquest has detailed the crimes committed under
the Soviet system, and American public opinion generally views Nazism and
communism with equal distaste. It is therefore hard for Americans to
understand the uproar caused in France by an 800-page book entitled LE
LIVRE NOIR DU COMMUNISME. CRIMES, TERREUR, REPRESSION. The authors are
respected intellectuals: Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis
Panne, Andrzej Paezkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin. The authors
had access to hitherto closed archives, so they go beyond Conquest's work,
but the thrust is the same. Fashionable French intellectuals, who enjoy a
spurious prestige in many American university circles, have mostly been
pro-communist, and their reaction to the book has made life miserable for
the authors. However, facile intellectual babble about communism should
no longer be possible. This does not take into account the widespread
condemnation in France of U.S. neo-liberalism. It is probable that most
Frenchmen dislike all three systems. The Communist Party is a member of the
present French government. How it will be affected remains to be seen.
Ronald Hilton, 03/15/98
Ronald Hilton -
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