Extent of Repression in Socialist Countries

http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/1555.html

The dynamic of repression:
The global impact of the Stalinist model, 1944-1953
Dr. Balazs Szalontai
9/21/2003

Though this Szalontai figure espouses bourgeois western imperialist rhetoric with his dubious representation of the bourgeoisie (manifested by how he wraps quotations around landlords), he can be respected for at least reporting the truth in concern to the scale of repression in the socialist countries. All of these facts refute the flatulent accusations of thousands of executions in the socialist camp. With the establishment of the revisionist regimes headed by the likes of Janos Kadar and Vladyslav Gomulka, the crusade against the bourgeoisie was toned down and thus close to no executions occurred in these revisionist years. However, this article neglects curious information about the extent of repression during Nicolae Ceaucescu.

Quote:

Between 1947 and 1952 the Yugoslav regime tried dozens of middle-level Communist officials, survivors of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, and executed 11 of them.

Quote:

Between 1944-1945 and 1953, some 12,000 persons passed through Bulgarian labor camps. By contrast, in Poland 84,200 people (in proportion to the population, more than twice as many as in Bulgaria) had similar experiences between 1945 and 1954.

Quote:

In Hungary the number of political prisoners stood at 7,093 in 1953, while Czechoslovak jails had held some 25,000 "politicals" (proportionately, two and a half times as many as in Hungary) as early as 1949.

Quote:

In Hungary some 500 individuals were executed for political reasons in the 1946-1956 period. From 1945 to 24 February 1951, 227 executions took place. Of the 227 persons in question, 146 had been sentenced for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Quote:

The scale of executions proved quite similar in the other East European countries: 178 in Czechoslovakia between October 1948 and the end of 1952, 137 in Romania from 1945 to 1964, and 20 in Poland between 1950 and 1953.

Quote:

The greatest purge the Vietnamese Workers' Party ever experienced took place in the course of the 1953-1956 land reform campaign, which was patterned after the Chinese model. By December 1955 the rent-reduction campaign had affected 7,77 million people, i.e., 63 per cent of the population. Of the 44,444 "landlords" identified, 3,939 were tried and 1,175 executed.

Quote:

The second stage of the campaign (the land reform proper) had affected 4 million people by December 1955, of whom 18,738 were "revealed" as "concealed landlords" (these "revelations" led to further 3,312 trials and 162 executions). The scope of the repression can be gauged from that during the "correction" of the land reform's "errors" (1956-1957), the authorities released 23,748 political prisoners. By contrast, the North Korean land reform, though partly inspired by Chinese examples, proved essentially bloodless, as did the East European land reforms.