Article discreditng the thesis that Mao "killed millions of people" in The Great Leap

[kandrathe]

But I'm done with you, since this is going nowhere.

For anyone else reading, and interested in the scholarly (rather than schoolyard) discussion on the topic, my suggestion is to start with Cormac O'Grada, probably the foremost scholar on famine in the economic history field, for an excellent (and highly critical) overview of the recent work on the Great Leap Forward.

There is still a great deal we do not know about this period, about the regional variations in mortality, about what the central leadership knew and did compared with local officials, about the long-run demographic impact of the famine, and yes, even about the overall magnitude of excess mortality.

-Jester

I found a working paper by O'Grada published in 2008, Cormac Ó Gráda; (2008) 'The ripple that drowns? Twentieth century famines in China and India as economic history'. Economic History Review, 61 (S1):5-37.

I tried to discover who Joseph Ball is (not his real name). His Stalin and Mao apologist web site (whois: re-evaluationmao.org) is delisted. Odd how holocaust denial is vilified, but Stalin and Mao revisionists are viewed only as misinformed cranks. A reminder to our first amendment loving US readers; Holocaust denial is considered a crime in many places.

I did find a commentary from the time (2007) by a blogger, Oliver Kamm;

Joseph Ball (plainly yet another nom de keyboard) helpfully provides a more rounded geographical and ideological perspective on his website:

Opponents of communism often try to discredit Mao by drawing attention to his mainly positive view of Stalin. Why should this view discredit Mao? Stalin is routinely alleged to have killed as many people as Hitler during his collectivization drive and the purges of the 1930s. A simple examination of population figures accepted by western commentators shows that this is not the case. Stalin's regime created the world's first socialist economic system and defeated fascism. Like Mao, the negative features of his rule have been greatly exaggerated. The successes have been ignored.

It is not an error to treat the far Right and the far Left as comparable forces in malignity. I will go so far as the historian Robert Conquest in feeling that Nazism is a greater historical evil than Communism. Yet the disrepute and the mode of argument of the political fringes are parallel and not divergent.

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2007/...niers.html