1993/10/01 by Helen Fein · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Cambodian History and Society #Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0010417500018715
openalex publication_date 1993/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Revolutionary ideologies of both the left and the right have led to genocide and mass murders of unprecedented scope in this century. The survey by Harff and Gurr shows that genocides and politicides—killings of people in groups targeted because of organized political opposition—between 1945 and 1980 may have caused in this same period over twice as many deaths than wars. Such state killings claimed up to 2.6 times the number of lives lost in the aftermath of natural disasters between 1967 and 1986 (1987). Similarly, Rummel argues that four times as many people have been killed in democides, or state mass murders, of citizens in the twentieth century than have been killed in wars (1992).