Editing Democide (section)

== Application ==

=== Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes ===

==== Communist regimes ====

Rummel applied the concept of democide to [[Communist state|Communist regimes]].<ref name="Rummel 1993"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Fein|first=Helen|year=1993|chapter=Soviet and Communist Genocides and 'Democide'|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n4TaAAAAMAAJ|title=Genocide: A Sociological Perspective|volume=I|series=Contextual and Comparative Studies: Ideological Genocides|location=Thousand Oaks, California|publisher=SAGE Publications|pages=75–78|isbn=9780803988293}}</ref> In 1987, [[Rudolph Rummel]]'s book ''Death by Government'' Rummel estimated that 148 million were killed by [[Communist government]]s from 1917 to 1987. The list of Communist countries with more than 1 million estimated victims included: 
* [[History of the People's Republic of China|China]] at 76,702,000 (1949–1987), 
* the [[History of the Soviet Union|Soviet Union]] at 61,911,000 (1917–1987), 
* [[Democratic Kampuchea]] (1975–1979) at 2,035,000, 
* [[History of Vietnam since 1945|Vietnam]] (1945–1987) at 1,670,000, 
* [[Polish People's Republic|Poland]] (1945–1987) at 1,585,000, 
* [[North Korea]] (1948–1987) at 1,563,000,  
* [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] (1945–1987) at 1,072,000.<ref name="Rummel 1994a"/>

In 1993, Rummel wrote: "Even were we to have total access to all communist archives we still would not be able to calculate precisely how many the communists murdered. Consider that even in spite of the archival statistics and detailed reports of survivors, the best experts still disagree by over 40 percent on the total [[Death toll of the Holocaust|number of Jews killed by the Nazis]]. We cannot expect near this accuracy for the victims of communism. We can, however, get a probable [[Orders of magnitude (numbers)|order of magnitude]] and a relative approximation of these deaths within a most likely range."<ref name="Rummel 1993"/> In 1994, Rummel updated his estimates for Communist regimes at about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by Communist democide from 1900 to 1987.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|year=1994|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM|title=Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900|edition=1st|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|publisher=Transaction Publishers|page=15, table 1.6|isbn=9781560009276|access-date=31 August 2021|via=Power Kills}}</ref> Due to additional information about [[Mao Zedong]]'s culpability in the [[Great Chinese Famine]] according to ''[[Mao: The Unknown Story]]'', a 2005 book authored by [[Jon Halliday]] and [[Jung Chang]], Rummel revised upward his total for Communist democide to about 148 million,<ref>{{cite web|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|date=20 November 2005|url=http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/11/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-be.html|url-status=dead|title=Reevaluating China's Democide to be 73,000,000|website=Democratic Peace|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071101055924/http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/11/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-be.html|archive-date=1 November 2007|access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|date=30 November 2005|url=http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/11/getting-my-reestimate-of-maos-democide.html|url-status=live|title=Getting My Reestimate of Mao's Democide Out|website=Freedom's Peace|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051220233526/http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/11/getting-my-reestimate-of-maos-democide.html|archive-date=20 December 2005|access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|date=1 December 2005|url=http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?1c1d76bb-290c-447b-82dd-e295ff0d3d59|url-status=dead|title=Stalin Exceeded Hitler in Monstrous Evil; Mao Beat Out Stalin|website=Hawaii Reporter|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090917001933/http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?1c1d76bb-290c-447b-82dd-e295ff0d3d59|archive-date=17 September 2009|access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref> using their estimate of 38 million famine deaths.<ref>{{cite book|last=Charny|first=Israel W.|year=2016|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4iBsDAAAQBAJ|title=The Genocide Contagion: How We Commit and Confront Holocaust and Genocide|location=Lanham, Maryland|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|page=203|isbn=9781442254367|access-date=2 December 2021|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Rummel's figures for Communist governments have been criticized for the methodology which he used to arrive at them, and they have also been criticized for being higher than the figures which have been given by most scholars<ref name="Harff 19962">{{cite journal |last=Harff |first=Barbara |date=Summer 1996 |title=Review. Reviewed Work: ''Death by Government'' by R. J. Rummel |journal=The Journal of Interdisciplinary History |location=Boston, Massachusetts |publisher=The MIT Press |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=117–119 |doi=10.2307/206491 |jstor=206491}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Hiroaki |first=Kuromiya |date=January 2001 |title=Review Article: Communism and Terror |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=SAGE Publications |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=191–201 |doi=10.1177/002200940103600110 |jstor=261138 |s2cid=49573923}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Paczkowski |first=Andrzej |date=Spring 2001 |title=The Storm over ''The Black Book'' |url=http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/essays/storm-over-black-book |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=28–34 |jstor=40260182 |via=Wilson Quarterly Archives |accessdate=31 August 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Weiner |first=Amir |date=Winter 2002 |title=Review. Reviewed Work: ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'' by Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Jonathan Murphy, Mark Kramer |journal=The Journal of Interdisciplinary History |location=Boston, Massachusetts |publisher=The MIT Press |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=450–452 |doi=10.1162/002219502753364263 |jstor=3656222 |s2cid=142217169}}</ref><ref name="Dulić 2004">{{cite journal |last=Dulić |first=Tomislav |date=January 2004 |title=Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide |journal=Journal of Peace Research |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=SAGE Publications |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=85–102 |doi=10.1177/0022343304040051 |jstor=4149657 |s2cid=145120734}}</ref><ref name="Karlsson & Schoenhals 20082">{{cite book |url=https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160915200301/http://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf |archive-date=2016-09-15 |url-status=live |title=Crimes Against Humanity under Communist Regimes – Research Review |publisher=Forum for Living History |year=2008 |isbn=9789197748728 |editor-last1=Karlsson |editor-first1=Klas-Göran |location=Stockholm, Sweden |pages=35, 79 |quote=While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin's terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted. ... It could, quite rightly, be claimed that the opinions that Rummel presents here (they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history) do not deserve to be mentioned in a research review, but they are still perhaps worth bringing up on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere. |editor-last2=Schoenhals |editor-first2=Michael |via=Forum för levande historia |accessdate=November 17, 2021}}</ref><ref name="Harff 20172">{{cite book |last=Harff |first=Barbara |title=R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions |publisher=Springer |year=2017 |isbn=978-3-319-54463-2 |editor-last=Gleditsch |editor-first=Nils Petter |series=SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice |volume=37 |location=New York City, New York |pages=111–129 |chapter=The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2_12 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-54463-2_12.pdf |doi-access=free |accessdate=30 August 2021}}</ref>.

==== Right-wing authoritarian, fascist, and feudal regimes ====

Estimates by Rummel for [[fascist]] or [[right-wing]] [[authoritarian]] regimes include: 
* [[Nazi Germany]] at 20,946,000 (1933–1945), 
* [[Nationalist government|Nationalist China]] (1925–1949) and later [[Martial law in Taiwan|Taiwan]] (1949–1987) at 10,214,000,  
* [[Empire of Japan]] at 5,964,000 (1900–1945). 
Estimates for other regime-types include: 
* the [[Ottoman Empire]] at 1,883,000 ([[Armenian genocide]] and [[Greek genocide]]), 
* [[Pakistan]] at 1,503,000 ([[1971 Bangladesh genocide]]), 
* [[Porfiriato]] in Mexico at somewhere between 600,000 and 3,000,000 and closer to 1,417,000 (1900–1920),<ref name="Mexican Democide"/>  
* the [[Russian Empire]] at 1,066,000 (1900–1917).<ref name="Rummel 1994a">{{cite book|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|year=1994|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM|title=Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900|edition=1st|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=9781560009276|access-date=25 November 2021|via=Power Kills}}</ref>

Democide in Communist and Nationalist China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union are characterized by Rummel as deka-megamurderers (128,168,000), while those in Cambodia, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia are characterized as the lesser megamurderers (19,178,000), and cases in Mexico, North Korea, and feudal Russia are characterized as suspected megamurderers (4,145,000).<ref name="Rummel 1994a"/> Rummel wrote that "even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the Soviets and Communist Chinese", they "proportionally killed more".<ref>{{cite book|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|year=1992|url=https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM|title=Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=9781412821476|access-date=28 November 2021|via=Power Kills}}</ref>

=== Colonial regimes ===

In response to [[David Stannard]]'s figures about what he terms "the [[American Holocaust]]",<ref>{{cite book|last=Stannard|first=David|year=1992|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cXQ8DwAAQBAJ|title=American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World|edition=paperback|location=New York City, New York|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|page=95|isbn=9780195085570|access-date=2 December 2021|via=Google Books}}</ref> Rummel estimated that over the centuries of [[European colonization]] about 2 million to 15 million [[American indigenous people]] were victims of democide, excluding military battles and unintentional deaths in Rummel's definition. Rummel wrote that "[e]ven if these figures are remotely true, then this still make this subjugation of the Americas one of the bloodier, centuries long, democides in world history."<ref>{{cite book|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|year=1994|chapter=Pre-Twentieth Century Democide|title=Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|publisher=Transaction Publishers|page=15|isbn=9781560009276}}</ref> 
* Rummel stated that his estimate for those killed by colonialism is 50,000,000 persons in the 20th century; this was revised upwards from his initial estimate of 815,000 dead.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rummel|first=Rudolph|year=1998|orig-date=1997|title=Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900|location=Münster, Germany|publisher=Lit Verlag|isbn=9783825840105}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Commentary: Exemplifying the Horror of European Colonization: Leopold's Congo |url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.7.1.03.HTM |access-date=2023-03-19 |website=www.hawaii.edu}}</ref>

=== Democratic regimes ===

While democratic regimes are considered by Rummel to be the least likely to commit democide and engage in wars per the [[democratic peace theory]],<ref name="Harff 2017"/> Rummel wrote that 
* "democracies themselves are responsible for some of this democide. Detailed estimates have yet to be made, but preliminarily work suggests that some 2,000,000 foreigners have been killed in cold blood by democracies."<ref name="Rummel 1994b"/> 
[[Foreign policy]] and [[secret service]]s of democratic regimes "may also carry on subversive activities in other states, support deadly [[coup]]s, and actually encourage or support rebel or military forces that are involved in democidal activities. Such was done, for example, by the American [[CIA]] in [[1953 Iranian coup d'état|the 1952 coup]] against Iran Prime Minister [[Mossadeq]] and [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|the 1973 coup against Chile]]'s democratically elected President [[Salvador Allende|Allende]] by General [[Pinochet]]. Then there was the secret support given the military in [[Salvadoran Civil War|El Salvador]] and [[Guatemalan Civil War|Guatemala]] although they were slaughtering thousands of presumed [[communist]] supporters, and that of the [[Contras]] in their war against the [[Sandinista]] government of [[Nicaraguan Revolution|Nicaragua]] in spite of their atrocities. Particularly reprehensible was the covert support given to the Generals in Indonesia as [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66|they murdered hundreds of thousands of communists and others]] after [[30 September Movement|the alleged attempted communist coup in 1965]], and the continued secret support given to General [[Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan]] of Pakistan even as he was involved in [[1971 Bangladesh genocide|murdering over a million Bengalis in East Pakistan]] (now Bangladesh)."<ref name="Rummel 1994b"/>

According to Rummel, examples of democratic democide would include "those killed in indiscriminate or civilian targeted [[Strategic bombing during World War II|city bombing]], as of [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] and [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] in [[World War II]]. It would include the [[Philippine–American War#American atrocities|large scale massacres of Filipinos]] during the bloody [[History of the Philippines (1898–1946)|American colonization of the Philippines]] at the beginning of this century, deaths in [[Second Boer War concentration camps|British concentration camps]] in [[South Africa]] during the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]], civilian deaths due to [[starvation]] during the British [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|blockade of Germany]] in and after World War I, the [[Boxer Rebellion|rape and murder of helpless Chinese in and around Peking]] in 1900, the [[Vietnam War#War crimes committed by US forces|atrocities committed by Americans]] in [[Vietnam War|Vietnam]], the murder of helpless [[Demographics of Algeria|Algerians]] during the [[Algerian War]] by the [[France|French]], and the [[unnatural death]]s of German [[prisoners of war]] in [[German prisoners of war in France|French]] and [[German prisoners of war in the United States|American POW camps]] after World War II."<ref name="Rummel 1994b"/>