‘De kapo is verantwoordelijk voor de werkprestatie van de gevangenen, hij voorkomt sabotage en zorgt ervoor dat alles ordelijk en schoon is. Als soldaat zal het u aanspreken. Wanneer we niet meer tevreden zijn, is hij kapo af en slaapt hij weer bij zijn mannen. Hij weet dat hij de eerste nacht door hen zal worden doodgeslagen,’ aldus Heinrich Himmler, leider van de SS, in 1944 tot zijn generaals.

This text was originally published in 1997 as a supplement to Rouge. Writing in response to The Black Book of Communism, Bensaïd discusses the Stalinist counter-revolution.ⁱ

Our new book is a republication of Internationalism or Russification: A study in the Soviet nationalities problem, Ivan Dzyuba’s classic 1965 samizdat denouncing national oppression of Ukraine by the USSR. 

Three defeats of the German revolution

I

On the occasion of the bicentenary celebrations of the Great French Revolution of 1789, there was an intense public controversy in France, Great Britain and the United States about the alleged ‘excessive costs’ of this revolution.ⁱ The conquest of human rights, so far, so good. But what about the deaths caused by the Terror and those of the Vendée uprisings?

At the end of the Second World War, the revolutionary movement faced an unexpected situation.ⁱ The bureaucratic Soviet regime had not only survived the war, but appeared to be expanding in Eastern Europe. Capitalism, out of breath in the 1930s, seemed to be regaining strength.