What does it mean to be evil? This is a question that is top of mind for me after finishing Anne Applebaum’s magisterial Gulag: A History. Close readers may remember the topic of my previous newsletter, which I wrote after finishing the most famous of Gulag books, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Both books—the former a straight history, the latter “an experiment in literary investigation,” as the subtitle has it—expose the horrific conditions of the Soviet Union’s hard labor camp and prison system. When you fold the history of the Soviet Union’s repressive regime into that of Hitler’s Third Reich and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, you get a strange mosaic of what appears to be unadulterated evil.
The three butchers of the 20th century—Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—are notable for a few reasons: Each wanted to establish a totalitarian, world-straddling empire; in the process of obtaining such an empire, each killed somewhere in the tens of millions of innocent members of their own societies; and each was far removed from the actual act of this senseless slaughter. These three facts are instructive, and I will attempt to explore them with some sort of logical sequence in this newsletter.
The 20th century was unique in world history. Coming on the heels of a centuries-long industrial revolution, the early 1900s saw the world awash in new technologies that were previously unfathomable. From the steam engine to the automatic rifle, no society prior to the ones existing at the dawn of the 20th century had ever seen such technological progress. Along with that new technology came a ballooning population and a new yearning for freedom. After several political revolutions that saw varying levels of success—beginning with the Glorious Revolution in England in the mid-1600s—this growing population the world over began pining for liberty.
As Americans, we often forget that not all revolutions are a net positive for the societies that carry them out. Without clear direction and guardrails, mass movements can take a dark turn, and the people who are willing and able to seize control of this diffuse energy are often megalomaniacal. That was on display during the French Revolution, which initially looked like the American one upon which it was modeled, but which devolved into the Reign of Terror and ended in the restoration of the French monarchy. Similarly, the agitated populations of Europe—and, later, China—took their revolutionary zeal too far.
In Germany, Russia, and China, the revolutionaries’ squabbling and infighting opened up pathways to power for the aforementioned butchers. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao picked up the pieces of their shattered societies and fashioned them into something resembling a sword. Each dictator reveled in their own power and wanted to use that power to take over the whole world. Hitler did this by beefing up Germany’s military and invading Poland, whereas Stalin and Mao succeeded by building vast bureaucracies and secret police forces to carry out collectivization projects. Hitler was ultimately unsuccessful, but the Soviet Union’s totalitarian empire extended almost until I was born. China is still ruled by Mao’s Communist Party, though it looks quite different now than it did before.
Once the bad guys were in power, they pursued their totalitarian, world-encompassing goals by taking the sword they fashioned and turning it against their own people. But remember: The 20th century was notable in part because of the expanding population of the world. Germany, the Soviet Union, and China all had massive populations (especially the latter two), so any policy of killing innocent civilians led to higher death tolls than ever before seen in world history. So when Hitler rounded up Germany’s Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and Poles, he killed millions upon millions of them. Of course, the 20th century’s new technologies helped: Train cars transported prisoners to sprawling concentration camps that featured new, efficient methods of mass murder. Similarly, when Stalin and Mao decided that the successful farmers in their respective empires were a bit too successful, they relocated them to Gulags or exile villages—confiscating their property along the way—thereby removing the producers most capable of feeding the ever-expanding numbers of their Soviet and Chinese comrades.
Of course, all of this sounds deliberately, undeniably evil. The killing, imprisonment, and forced exile of millions of innocent civilians is a terrible act. But since these dictators sat atop massive bureaucracies that were in charge of carrying out their murderous policies, the individual rulers themselves probably never laid their own fingers on those they were responsible for executing. They were undeniably responsible for the policies’ inception, but to them, the lives lost as a result of their decisions were mere numbers in reports written in dry, bureaucratic language.
That raises an interesting question: What really is evil? Few people would hesitate to label the butchers of the 20th centuries as such. Whatever your religious precepts (or lack thereof), the taking of innocent lives is universally considered to be evil, as it should be.
But the impersonalization of technology and large, bureaucratic regimes removes the originator of such murderous policies from the effects they actually inflict upon real human beings. I have to wonder whether, if Hitler was given a machine gun, he would pull the trigger on groups of cowering, pleading human beings, or whether Stalin would willingly carry out his own orders in the Gulag by denying political prisoners food until they withered away from starvation. That would seem to be the real test of evil.
We rightly condemn the people who carried out Hitler’s policies and reject the excuse of “I was just following orders.” In saying that, those people are attempting to offload the blame onto others. But if you were in a similar situation, would you find yourself capable of defying orders and winding up on the inside of the gas chamber instead of the outside? If you were a KGB operative and you were threatened with being separated from your family for not shooting an innocent Gulag prisoner, would you find the courage to resist?
These are terribly uncomfortable questions that have no good answers. We like to think of ourselves as the “good guys” who are incapable of inflicting harm on innocent people. But if we were confronted with a totalitarian regime hell-bent on dominating the entire world—and thus intolerant of dissenting opinions—there’s no guaranteeing what we would do.
Solzhenitsyn famously wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that “The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” It’s hard to deny the validity of this statement, no matter how much we wish it were not true.
Still, I think it’s undeniable that the three most famous 20th century dictators were evil. Even if they did not themselves look into the eyes of their victims, they knew what they were having their henchmen do throughout their respective empires. The impersonal, bureaucratic nature of the killings simply makes these acts all the more haunting.
But never forget that so many people were in on the repression, even if they would never consider themselves to be evil. This recognition should humble us, and we should never think that we are incapable of atrocious acts of evil.
The timing of this article is eery Greg. It hits a chord with what this world is seeing currently. I am so concerned and even frightened by the events of the last few weeks and what we have seen over the last few years in the world and how we are perceived. I pray that this lifetimes butchers aren’t permitted to carry out any more atrocities that already have been. The world doesn’t need anymore death and torture. What is occurring in the Middle East crushes my spirit and makes me pray for all those innocent people who have been taken so brutally.
I know I’m off on a tangent, but once again reading your article ignited these feelings, which I know is something you want your readers to experience.
Thank you for that, and done again my friend. Wishing you health and peace and that your new adventure is going well!
it's a weird human quality. you would think with the light shone via the printing press, television, media and internet that we would evolve out of evil tendencies but we don't. seems part of the human condition. certainly separates us from animals. the choice to be evil that is. reminds me of the Milgram Experiment whereby authority figures gave instructions to subjects to administer ever increasing levels of electric shocks to participants to incentivize their learning through punishment. none of the shocks were actual. the purpose of the experiment was to psychologically determine if subjects who do acts demanded from authority in contrast with their conscience are accomplices or just following orders. evil doers can't do it alone if they want to do it big. they need a system of compliance. some things never change.