Mass killings under communist regimes

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Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticized. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Holodomor and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, and the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea (now Cambodia) .

The concepts of connecting disparate killings to the status of the communist states which committed them, and of trying to ascribe common causes and factors to them, have been both supported and criticized by the academic community. Some academics view these concepts as an indictment of communism as an ideology, while other academics view them as being overly simplistic and rooted in anti-communism. There is academic debate over whether the killings should be attributed to the political system, or to the leaders of the communist states; similarly, there is debate over whether all the famines which occurred during the rule of communist states can be considered mass killings. Mass killings which were committed by communist states have been compared to killings which were committed by other types of states. Monuments to the victims of communism exist in almost all the capitals of Eastern Europe, as well as many other cities in the world.