The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation pushes one number very aggressively: 100 million. 100 million victims of communism in the 20th century, killed in purges or starved in state-manufactured famines. This seems, on its face, the ultimate indictment, the unbeatable argument against communism. 100 million dead.
Yet to invoke this number is to tempt a certain type of communist apologist to start stacking bodies on the other side. What about the Indian famines under British rule? What about the bloodthirsty dictators that America and its allies propped up in order to oppose the USSR? Depending on how one chooses to do the accounting, you can always find some bodies somewhere.
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