ABSTRACT
“No other state in history,” wrote genocide scholar Richard Rubenstein, “has ever initiated policies designed to eliminate so many of its own citizens as has the Soviet Union.” The version of communism instituted in these three regimes was, in central respects, a perversion of the original doctrine, developed by Karl Marx and others in the nineteenth century. “Marxism” defines society and historical evolution in terms of social classes, inevitably unequal and opposed, and therefore destined for “class struggle.” Marxism and socialism were crucial in spurring modern conceptions and movements of human rights, women's rights, workers’ rights, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism. The Bolshevik Revolution took place after centuries of dictatorship and underdevelopment in Russia, as well as during the most destructive war to that point in European history. Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia, in 1879.
