[mim3@mim.org comments: MIM is seeking tenured faculty, journalists, book reviewers and student organizations to agree to be a signatory to the statement below. Please indicate your willingness to mim3@mim.org or write to MIM, PO Box 29670, Los Angeles, CA 90029-0670]
From Maoist Internationalist Movement, (MIM) mim3@mim.org
March 17, 2001, 2nd ed. of petition below
To Harvard University Press:
We the undersigned are concerned about the lack of factual accuracy in the "Black Book of Communism" and demand that Harvard University Press appoint a committee of scholars to spend at least six months reviewing it and making recommendations for editorial change before it goes into print again. Specifically, we have already noted errors in the book misplacing decimal points that exaggerate the deaths by a factor of 10. Other factual errors include the reporting of land reform in capitalist countries and the imprisonment rate in the United States.
We would like to stress that our demand does not concern the ethical or religious priorities of the authors. Although the "Black Book" authors would like to count the war against fascism as a "crime" of communism, that does not concern us here: we are only concerned about the facts that the authors and editors claim to present, not how they are ideologically interpreted.
See MIM's review of the Black Book of Communism from February 2000 See all the links in this matter in chronological order See the initial correspondence between MIM and Harvard University Press See an earlier petition to Harvard University Press
Contact MIM by writing mim3@mim.org