Un Etat Contre Son Peuple - de Lenine a Poutine

A completely revised and considerably expanded version of the key chapter of the Black Book of Communism, based on Soviet archives opened after the fall of the USSR, this volume, the fruit of decades of research, analyzes the major dimension of the functioning of the Soviet Party-state: the violence inflicted on its own people. Forced collectivization, a veritable war against the peasantry who then constituted 80% of the population, the resulting famines, the Great Terror and its hundreds of thousands of executions, the Gulag and the widespread repression of millions of "ordinary citizens" are, under the author's pen, given the most documented and relevant insight possible. After having been, for a short time, recognized in post-Soviet Russia, the dark side of the Soviet experience is once again denied by the current regime. Will a memory of the mass crimes of the Soviet regime, crimes committed primarily against its own people, ever prevail in Russia? wondered Arseniy Roginsky, president of the Memorial Association, in 2013. Twelve years later, sadly, it appears that this hypothetical day has receded even further. However, without a historical memory worthy of the name, this major figure in the fight for human rights reminded us, "the emergence of a normal system of social values, in which life, liberty and human dignity would be given absolute priority over the interests of state power, simply cannot come about."