Stéphane Courtois

Stéphane Courtois
Born	(1947-11-25) 25 November 1947 Dreux, Eure-et-Loir, France
Nationality	France
Occupation	Director of Research at CNRS, Professor of History at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies
Known for	Research on communism and communist genocides
Awards	Doctor honoris causa from the Free University of Moldova
Notes
Director of the journal Communisme, Member of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Political Innovation (2009–2011)

Stéphane Courtois (born 25 November 1947) is a French historian and university professor, a Director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies (ICES) in La Roche-sur-Yon, and Director of a collection specialized in the history of communist movements and regimes.

Biography

Stéphane Courtois (born November 25, 1947), the son of a school teacher. He is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books. The Black Book of Communism, a book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold million of copies and is considered a standard work on communist genocides.

Courtois is a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in the Géode (group of study and observation of democracy) at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, as well as a Professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies – ICES. He is editor of the journal Communisme, which he co-founded with Annie Kriegel in 1982, and part of the Cercle de l'Oratoire think tank.

As a student, from 1968 to 1971, Courtois was a Maoist, although he later became an outspoken anti-communist and a strong supporter of democracy, pluralism, human rights, and Rechtsstaat.

Courtois argues that communism and national socialism are slightly different totalitarian systems, and that communism is responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the 20th century. He also argues that the National Socialists adopted their repressive methods from Soviet methods. According to Courtois, "a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has [...] prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world".

Extreme Left activism (1968–1971)

See also: May 1968 protests in France

Stéphane Courtois was an activist in the Maoist Marxist–Leninist organization Vive communism from 1968 to 1971, which changed its name in 1969 to Vive la Revolution with Roland Castro. At this time he directed the organisation's bookstore at rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in Paris. He describes himself as having been "anarcho-Maoist," but many "repented" of the extreme left and later became supporters of democracy and multi-party democracy and often anti-communists.

The Communist Party at war and the Communisme journal

Having taken legal studies and history, he became known in 1980 with the publication of his thesis, the PCF at war under the direction of Annie Kriegel. It was with her that he founded in 1982 the journal Communisme which brought together non-Communist specialists on French communism. After the death of Annie Kriegel, he became the main organiser of the magazine. Stéphane Courtois was appointed Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he was responsible for the "Group observations and studies of democracy" (GEODE). This period at Communisme was seen as an extremely rich period for research of all kinds, the crucible of important work published in the 1980s.

Visits to the archives of the Comintern in Moscow (1992–1994)

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and of the "Iron Curtain", the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 following the communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe, the archives of the Comintern were opened not only to Russian historians, but also for western researchers.

This opening represented an opportunity for Stéphane Courtois to access unpublished sources to rewrite the history of communism which until now had been impregnated by the propaganda of Soviet-style regimes, countered only by unverifiable assertions of their opponents. Courtois described this historiographical turning point as a "true revolution in documentation". For example, a historical study of the PCF had been made for decades, not on genuine archival documents but on the basis of stories, such as memoirs published by PCF members (including Jacques Duclos), because the original PCF records were kept not at party headquarters in Paris, but in Moscow, in accordance with the central clauses governing their admission to the Comintern (conditions of admission to the Third International). In 2006, Courtois wrote a book entitled Communism in France. The revolution in documentation and revised historiography.

Stéphane Courtois made his first visit to the archives of the Comintern in Moscow in September 1992. Later he made three more visits — the last in December 1994. In 2009, at a conference, Stéphane Courtois said: "I did not go to promote The Black Book of Communism in Russia [...] In any case, I do not go back again for quite some time [...] I quickly became aware that I was under constant surveillance in the archives".

Courtois, gleaned some spectacular information from the archives and in deliberately provoking controversy, led in the eyes of some at the Communisme journal to a divisive position with the complementary scientific researches there. Since 1993, a large part of the editorial board of Communisme left the journal.

Orientation of works after the publication of The Black Book

If the historiographic production of Courtois before 1995 mainly concerned the PCF, after this it then focused more on the Comintern and the history of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In the Black Book, he was concerned with the criminal aspects of the actions of the Comintern. In his book on Eugen Fried which he co-wrote with Annie Kriegel in 1997, the emphasis was more on the control by the Comintern on the national communist parties and the mass anti-fascist organizations such as Amsterdam-Pleyel, Secours Rouge, and the Universal Gathering for peace. In the foreword of Eugen Fried, he indicated that the project initiated in 1984–85 had to be suspended in 1991 when the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were transferred to the State Archives of the Republic of Russia. "In 1992, Annie Kriegel and Stéphane Courtois were there in Moscow. They made several trips to the Russian capital and brought back thousands of pages on microfilm...

In a communication to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Courtois defended the thesis that Stalin was perfectly representative of the Soviet regime introduced in the 1917 Revolution led by Lenin:

"The fact remains that in the foundation phase of the system, from 1917 to 1953, it was the ideology that dictated the conduct of Lenin and then of Stalin ... Stalin was an authentic Bolshevik — pupil of the school of Leninism ... Stalin was not the obscure apparatchik described by Trotsky, but one of the direct collaborators of Lenin and among the most appreciated for his unwavering support of the leader, his sense of discipline, his composure and exceptional firmness of character, his determination, and his total lack of scruples or compassion in his actions".

After the publication of Eugen Fried, Courtois led many joint editorial projects, such as: A clean sweep From the past! History and Memory of Communism in Europe (2002), which came at the end of the Black Book of Communism and provided additions to the book, mostly written by foreign authors, and the Dictionary of Communism (2007). In 2008, he contributed to the Black Book of the French Revolution, in a chapter devoted to the relationship between Jacobinism and Bolshevism. In 2009, he returned again to the question of communism with the book Communism and totalitarianism, which was a collection of a series of his articles on the subject.

Stéphane Courtois has also expanded his work to include all totalitarian regimes. He organises many international conferences on this theme and maintains a collection of the Éditions du Seuil and the Éditions du Rocher.

Major works

Methodological influences

Alumnus of the French historian Annie Kriegel, Stéphane Courtois said that his book Communism and Totalitarianism (2009) is built on the model of several books by her, including The Bread and the Roses: foundations for a history of socialism (1968) and French communism in the mirror (1974). The methodology developed by Annie Kriegel, and adopted by Stéphane Courtois, consisted of an accumulation of stages of thought of the researcher in the form of texts that are grouped by topic and published regularly.

Taking up the concept of a "history workshop "developed by the historian François Furet, in his eponymous book published in 1982, Stéphane Courtois said that "the serious historian is an artisan who constantly works on the job, because he is dependent on sources, archives, etc. [...] And of course, these sources, archives, they are constantly changing. Thus, the evolution of this process permits a construction of a united vision more comprehensive and nuanced than at the start.

The Journal Communisme (1982–)

See mian article: Communisme

The Black Book of Communism (1997)

Main article: The Black Book of Communism

After many contributions and publications on various aspects of communism, both in France and internationally, Courtois participated in the Black Book of Communism, project published in November 1997, where he was the coordinator and wrote the preface. Also participating in this workwere: Nicolas Werth (professor of history and a researcher at the Institute of Modern History (IHTP) where he specialises in the Soviet Union), Jean-Louis Panné (historian and editor at Gallimard, also the author of a biography of Boris Souvarine), Karel Bartosek (researcher at CNRS and editor of the journal New Alternative), Andrzej Paczkowski (Professor of Political Science and member of the board of the archives for the Ministry of Interior). Courtois himself was the co-author of an article on the Comintern.

Content of the Black Book

The book takes stock of the crimes committed by the various forms of power exercised by communism. The introduction by Courtois is entitled "The Crimes of Communism" which was responsible for the deaths of nearly 100 million human beings.

"The crimes of communism have not been subject to a legitimate and normal assessment from a historical or a moral point of view. Without doubt this is here one of the first times that we try an approach to communism in questioning whether its criminality is both central and global to its existence".

The book is part of an essentialist vision of communism developed by Ernst Nolte that it would have as its essence a general criminal nature.

Controversy over the number of victims

One of the contributors to the Black Book, Nicolas Werth criticised Stéphane Courtois for having, in his preface, the figure of 20 million economic or political victims of socialism in the USSR, while they themselves did not number more than 15 million victims. Another contributor, Jean-Louis Margolin noted that he had never talked about 1 million deaths in Vietnam, contrary to what was claimed by Stéphane Courtois in his text.

How to calculate in an unbiased fashion the numbers of disparate victims who died in civil wars, economic crises or even common criminals on five continents by various regimes for more than 70 years, was also discussed. The authors of the Century of Communism (2000), led by Claude Pennetier, challenged the uniqueness of communism underpinned by the Black Book "If it is a presupposition that this book would definitely wish to call in question, as well as prejudice, it contains some truth. It is the uniqueness of what is called the "communism of the 20th century. From "Past of an Illusion, "Crimes of Communism, the first error is the non-critical use of a single article and will consequently reduce Communism to "one" fundamental property. "The authors of this book did not have much in common with the Hungary of János Kádár and the Cambodia of Pol Pot.

Controversy on the comparison with Nazism

Main article: Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism

It is less the number of deaths caused by dictatorships who claim to be communist as the comparison with Nazism which has caused controversy in France, which has very similar terms to the famous "quarrel of historians" who tied up Germany in the mid-1980s because of an article by Ernst Nolte. Some writers and commentators were surprised that Courtois made the comparison with Nazism a theme of part of the preface, when no contributions referred to the question.

Stéphane Courtois raised the comparison between Nazism and Communism as an issue to be dealt with by historians and called for the establishment of an equivalent of the Nuremberg tribunal to try those Communists responsible [ref. needed]. He compared the organization of the two movements, and the number of victims attributed to communism to the number of deaths from Nazism. He draws a parallel between Nazi "race genocide" and what he calls, following Ernst Nolte, "Class genocide". Communism was, for its supporters, a humanist and egalitarian ideology, unlike Nazism, many historians — starting with some authors of the book — expressed their disagreement with Courtois. Nicolas Werth, in particular, said that "the more you compare communism and Nazism, the more obvious are the differences".

According to Annette Wieviorka, director of research at CNRS, "Stéphane Courtois shows the comparison between the acute awareness of the Jewish genocide and that of Communism which is a tissue of falsehoods and approximations", highlighting that the Holocaust only become a privileged object of historical research in the 1970s and has imposed itself on the collective memory in the 1980s. He also cites François Furet (who would have written the foreword had he not died prematurely) who said: the Genocide of Jews had "the awful distinction of being an end in itself".

Some, despite repeated denials of a conflict of interest, saw this comparison as assimilation pure and simple, and as such have seen fit to denounce it. The journalist Benoît Rayski accused some intellectuals, including Stéphane Courtois, Alain Besançon, Ernst Nolte, and Jean-François Revel of wanting to confound the West about the issue of Nazism to promote their own anti-communism.

Main theses

Historiographical influences

Stéphane Courtois's works, especially The Black Book of Communism, were a continuation of the "turn" in historiography begun in 1995 with the publication of the essay by the ex-communist activist historian and member of the Communist Party from 1947 to 1959, François Furet dealing with the "communist illusion" and entitled The Past of an Illusion. Essay on the Communistidea in the 20th century.

François Furet had also agreed to write the preface to the Black Book of Communism but he died in July 1997, just weeks before making his text Stéphane Courtois.

"Communism is a form of totalitarianism"

For Stéphane Courtois, communism is a form of totalitarianism, and the same for Italian fascism German Nazism. In this sense he opposed Hannah Arendt and George L. Mosse. The first matches the birth of totalitarianism in Russia with the rise of Stalin (not Lenin), from there, it reduced to communist totalitarianism in a very short time to "Stalinism". The Historiography based on this theory from Hannah Arendt, designed in the 1950s, is — according to Stéphane Courtois — the mainstream in the teaching of the totalitarian phenomenon in France in the 21st century but Stéphane Courtois says "campaign" against this historiograhic orientation in which he opposes the idea of a totalitarian communism whose beginnings are the publication of What to do? by Lenin in 1902.

This thesis is outlined in his publication Communism and totalitarianism (Perrin, 2009) which dealt with the subject chronologically (thematic in the last installment) in a four part series of discussions dedicated to the totalitarian regimes in Europe:

• When night falls: Origins and emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe (1900-1934) (L'Age d'Homme, 2001)
• Such a long night: The peak of the totalitarian regimes in Europe (1935-1953) (Editions du Rocher, 2003)
• The day rises: Legacy of totalitarianism in Europe (1953-2005) (Editions du Rocher, 2003)
• The totalitarian logic in Europe (Editions du Rocher, 2006).

"Lenin was the inventor of totalitarianism"

Stéphane Courtois mainly described this thesis in his biography: Lenin, the inventor of totalitarianism (Perrin, 2007). It is included in a chapter on Communism and totalitarianism (Perrin, 2009).

"Glorious memory" and "tragic memory" of communism in Europe

According to Stéphane Courtois, there is a clear dichotomy in the history of communism between a "positive memory" of communism in Western Europe (France, Italy, Spain, etc..) and a "tragic memory" in Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, etc.). This theory was developed in the book that followed the Black Book of Communism and is entitled Make a clean sweep of the past! History and Memories of Communism in Europe (2002).

In France, this "positive memory" would be echoed in the social conquests of the Popular Front, the participation of the Communists in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, the resistance to the German occupation during World War II, and the Soviet victory over Nazism which Stéphane Courtois called "the universal appeal of Stalingrad"(the Soviet victory at Stalingrad marked the "turning point of the war" in favour of the Allies). He took here the concept coined by François Furet the "Universal appeal of October" in reference to the acclaim around the October Revolution.

To oppose this was a "tragic memory" which in Poland comes from its annexation after the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Katyn massacre, in the Baltic countries, from their annexation by the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1990, and in Romania, from the annexation by the Soviet Union of the regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and the establishment of a long dictatorship (45 years). According to the historical Commissions report in 1991 on Roumania, nearly two million people were killed and nearly 300,000 people were deported to labour camps either within Romania itself, or to Siberia or Kazakhstan. This deep trauma resulted in Romania, by the creation in 1993 at Sighet, a prison used by the Romanian communist regime, a place of memory (research institute, library, museum and summer university) unique of its kind: the "Memorial to the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance" (Memorial to the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance) (Memorialul Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei). Conference proceedings and discussions supported by Stéphane Courtois during four visits made to the memorial, and the Centre for Studies of Bucharest, were published in November 2003 under the title Courtois The Sighet(Fundatia Academia Civica) and republished in 2006 (Liternet).

In his speech at the Summer University at Sighet entitled "The Lost Honour of the European Left, "Stéphane Courtois denounced the rejection by more than two-thirds of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of a Resolution and a "Recommendation concerning the condemnation of crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes", 25 January 2007.

According to Courtois, this rejection was representative of the phenomenon that Alain Besançon described in 1997 as "historical amnesia and hypermnesia"(amnesia for non-Nazi crimes, hypermnesia for Nazi crimes) resulting in a denial of the "memory of the victims of other regimes other than Nazi" in some Western European states. This also prevents the emergence of what he calls a "reunification memorial", which could exist, with commemorations and educational activities taking place in common.

Public pronouncements

Support for military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq

Stéphane Courtois is a member of the Circle of Oratory and is on the editorial board of the journal Brave New World. It is a source of public support for the Afghan war of 2001, against "Islamic fundamentalism".

In the book Iraq, and me. Another look at a world at war, Stéphane Courtois drew a parallel between the communist past and the Islamism of today. Intellectually pro-American, he believes in his famous speech to the UN, Dominique de Villepin was a victim of "reactions which relate directly to Soviet propaganda in France. Having overemphasised "U.S. go home" for fifty years, this leaves its traces. Following the war in Iraq, Stéphane Courtois found that the abuses committed by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison was an "inevitable sideline of war".

Support for Gerard Chauvy

Stéphane Courtois supported Gerard Chauvy in the trial when he opposed Raymond Aubrac. François Delpla believed that in the context of this case, "the desire to finish with communism" had been lost on Courtois to the extent that he was running with the wolves against Raymond Aubrac, during a campaign questioning the quality of the resistance.

The Comintern and extreme left anti-fascists / anti-racists

Commenting on the news, Courtois established parallels between the far left movements of the 21st century and the anti-fascist and anti-racist movements when they were covertly supported by the Comintern.

Controversies with French historians

Due to the non-hagiographic nature of his works, in France, where the French Communist Party has long been "the first party of France" Stéphane Courtois is a historian challenged by a fringe of his colleagues, where the appearance of a number of controversies or "historian quarrels".

Henry Rousso

The historian Henry Rousso (Vichy, a past that does not pass, 1996) criticized Stéphane Courtois for simplifying all militant or communist sympathizers as accomplices of the crimes of Stalinism, and by extension considered all to be conditionally allied with communist forces or with the USSR as blind accomplices of Stalin.

Jean-Jacques Becker

The historian Jean-Jacques Becker believed that Courtois' research was sensationalist in nature: "This is a fighter who wants to make history effective, that is to say exactly the opposite of history…".

Annie Lacroix-Riz et Jean-Jacques Marie

Passers-by ignore the body of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv in 1932.

In 2006, in the magazine Brave New World, Stéphane Courtois published an article Famine in Ukraine (Holodomor): you said "denial"? (republished on the website of the historical journal Arkheia) in which he publicly accused the French historian and militant communist, Annie Lacroix-Riz of denying the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932–1933.

The famine was reported in the West in 1935 by Boris Souvarine. It was denounced by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1973 in The Gulag Archipelago. However, after a carefully sanitized visit to the USSR in the summer of 1933 by Prime Minister of France Édouard Herriot, he declared there was no famine. The great famine was confirmed by the opening of Soviet archives in the early 1990s.

According to Stéphane Courtois, Annie Lacroix-Rice tried to downplay the event as one of "scarcity" a famine in which several million people died. This article by Stéphane Courtois was - according to him - issued in response to the creation by Annie Lacroix-Riz, of "a website to appeal to his colleagues to mobilize against an unspeakable lie that ran the world for seventy years: No, ladies and gentlemen, there was no famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, much less a famine that would have caused millions of deaths, and especially not a famine organized by the Soviet regime itself".

Subsequently, in 2007 and in 2008 respectively, historians Annie Lacroix-Riz (Militant Communist) and fr (Militant Trotskyist) criticized Stéphane Courtois for having expressed his views in an interview with the extreme right monthly fr.

In 2009, Stéphane Courtois criticized the militant Trotskyist and historian Jean-Jacques Marie for the contents of chapter entitled: "1922: the year of serenity", published in his biography Lenin, 1870-1924 (Balland, Paris, 2004). Courtois accuses Jean-Jacques Marie for apologising for Lenin for whom 1922, on the contrary, was "the year of transition to paranoia". This showed itself on the one hand, by the note from Lenin to the Politburo on 19 March 1922 in which he wanted to use the Soviet famine of 1921–1922 to destroy the Orthodox Church: "It is precisely now when the famine-struck regions eat human flesh, and thousands of corpses litter the roads, that we need to enforce the confiscation of church property with savage energy and most unforgivingly, and crush any hint of resistance, with such brutality that it will be talked about for decades". This "paranoia" is also reflected in the Terror against the Socialist-Revolutionaries (death sentences, gulag, etc..) as well as the expulsion (or sometimes internal exile) of the Russian intelligentsia. This last event is described by Stéphane Courtois in the chapter "Lenin and the destruction of the Russian intelligentsia" in his book Communism and totalitarianism (pre-published in Societal magazine No. 55 to 59): "the deportees were warned that any illegal return to Russia would automatically entail the death penalty". On 25 May 1922, Lenin addressed himself to Stalin in the following terms: "hundreds of these gentlemen must be expelled without mercy. We are going to clean up Russia once and for all. [...] They should all be turned away from Russia". In September 1922, Lenin justified his act to Maxim Gorky: "the intellectuals, the lackeys of capitalism, think they are the brains of the nation. In reality, they are not the brain, they are crap".

Stéphane Courtois influence abroad

Although sometimes contested in France, the works of Stéphane Courtois are generally more favourably received abroad, especially in the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Romania

Translation of his work

As proof of his ideologic influence, an important part of the work of Stéphane Courtois has been translated into Romanian (The Black Book of Communism, Such a long night, Dictionary of communism, Communism and Totalitarianism, The blind spot in European history, etc.).

Sighet Memorial and Study Centre in Bucharest

Since 2001, Stéphane Courtois has been the rector of the Summer School of the Sighet Memorial. These visits to Romania are the project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Estonia

In 2000, Kommunismi must Raamat the Estonian version of the Black Book of Communism received political support by being prefaced by the Presidentof Estonia Lennart Meri. The preface was titled "Shadows over the world" ("Varjud maailma Kohal"). At the same time, the Prime Minister Mart Laar participated in this collective work by signing an additional chapter of 80 pages "Estonia and Communism" ("Eesti ja kommunism").

Moldova

Stéphane Courtois was awarded the honorary title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Free International University of Moldova (ULIM), located in Chisinau, 8 July 2011.

Specialised publisher

Besides his career as a historian Stéphane Courtois is a specialised publisher who has published authors such as Ernst Nolte or Reynald Secher.

The Age of Man and Communisme (1982–)

Since 1995 he has been Director (co-director from 1982 to 1995) and co-founder, with Annie Kriegel in 1982, of the journal Communisme at the University Press of France (PUF) and the The Age of Man.

Threshold: Archives of communism (1995–1999)

He was co-founder, with Nicolas Werth in 1995, of the collection "Archives of communism" from editions du Seuil.

Rocher: Democracy or totalitarianism (2002–2008)

He was founder and director from 2002 to 2008, of the collection "Democracy or totalitarianism" from Éditions du Rocher. This collection was transferred to Éditions du Cerf in 2010

Deer: Political Deer (2010–)

He is founder and director since 2010 of the collection "Political Deer" Éditions du Cerf.

Published works

Most of the works by Stéphane Courtois were written in French, though some have been directly published in a foreign language (English, German, etc..) and some works have been translated into foreign languages (The Black Book of Communism has more 30 translations).

Individual works / collective works (In collaboration: "in coll."; Under his direction: "dir.")

• 1980: The Communist Party at war. De Gaulle, the Resistance, Stalin ... Ramsay, Paris, 585 p. (ISBN 978-2859561345)
• 1987: Communism with Marc Lazar, MA Editions, Paris, 276 p. (ISBN 978-2866762445)
• 1987: Who knew what? The extermination of the Jews 1941-1945 with Adam Rayski (in coll.), La Découverte, Paris, 235 p. (ISBN 978-2707117052)
• 1989: The foreign blood. MOI Immigrants in the Resistance with Adam Rayski and Denis Peschanski (in coll.), Fayard. German Translation The Red Poster Und der Juden in Immigranten französischen resistance, Schwarze Risse Verlag, Berlin, 1994
• 1989: Testament with Boris Holban (in coll.), Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1989, 324 p.
• 1991: Comrades and Brothers. Communism and Trade Unions in Europe with Marc Lazar and Michael Waller (in coll.), London, Routledge, 204 p. (ISBN 978-0714634210)
• 1991: Fifty years of French passion. De Gaulle and the Communists with Marc Lazar (ed.) (in coll.), Paris, Balland, 1991, 342 p.
• 1992: Rigour & passion. Homage to Annie Kriegel with Shmuel Trigano and Marc Lazar (dir.) (in coll.), Deer/The Age of Man, Paris / Lausanne, 464p. (ISBN 978-2204049474)
• 1995: History of the French Communist Party with Marc Lazar (in coll.), Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 440 p. (ISBN 978-2130470489 and 978-2130510635) / History of the French Communist Party. 2nd edition updated with Marc Lazar (in coll.), Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2000, 480 p. (ISBN 978-2130510635)
• 1995 Notes on a report (about the Pierre Cot affair), Nanterre, GEODE / Université Paris X, 74 p.
• 1997: Eugen Fried, the great secret of the PCF with Annie Kriegel (in coll.), Threshold, Paris (ISBN 978-2020220507)
• 1997: The Black Book of Communism. Crimes, terror, repression with Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin (in coll.), Robert Laffont, Paris, 923 p. (ISBN 978-2221082041, 978-2266086110 and 978-2221088616)
• 2001: A look at the crisis of unionism with Dominique Labbé (eds.) (in coll.), L'Harmattan, 222 p. (ISBN 978-2747514620)
• 2001: When night falls. Origins and emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe, 1900-1934 (ed.), The Age of Man, Lausanne 416 p. (ISBN 978-2825116104)
• 2002: Make a clean sweep of the past! History and Memory of Communism in Europe (ed.), Robert Laffont, (ISBN 978-2221095003)
• 2002: "Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa." Das Erbe kommunistischer Ideologien (dir.) (in coll.) with Uwe Backes, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna Bölhau Verlag, 2002, 454 p. (ISBN 978-3412150013)
• 2003: Such a long night. The climax of the totalitarian regimes in Europe, 1935-1953 (dir.), Editions du Rocher, 532 p. (ISBN 978-2268045825)
• 2003: Courtois at Sighet, Fundatia Civic Academy Collection: Oral History No. 3, Bucharest, 2003, 304 p. (ISBN 973-8214181) / Courtois at Sighet, Editura Liternet, Bucharest, 2006, 185 p. (ISBN 973-7893530)
• 2006: The day rises. The legacy of totalitarianism in Europe, 1953-2005 (dir.), Editions du Rocher, 494 p. (ISBN 978-2268057019)
• 2006: The Totalitarian Logic in Europe (dir.), Editions du Rocher, 615 p. (ISBN 978-2268059785)
• 2006: Communism in France. The documentation revolution and historiographical renewal (dir.), Publishing Cujas, Paris (ISBN 978-2254076048)
• 2007: Dictionary of communism (dir.), Editions Larousse, Paris (ISBN 978-2035837820)
• 2009: Return to the Soviet-Nazi alliance, 70 years on, Foundation for Political Innovation, 16 p. (ISBN 978-2917613368)
• 2009: Communism and totalitarianism, Perrin, Paris (ISBN 978-2262030803)
• 2009: The blind spot of European memory. 23 August 1939: The Soviet-Nazi alliance, Fundatia Civic Academy, Bucharest, 142 p. (ISBN 978-9738214514)
• 2010: French Bolshevism, Fayard, Paris (ISBN 978-2213661377)
• 2011: Exit from communism. The changing of an epoque in Europe (dir.), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 660 p., (ISBN 978-2130587675)
• 2012: Democracy and revolution. A hundred examples from 1789 to now (ed.) (coll.) Jean-Pierre Deschodt, Yolène Dilas-Rocherieux, Deer / University Press of the Catholic Institute of Graduate Studies, (ISBN 978-2204098014)

Contributions (preface, afterword, chapter)

• 1992: introduction in Youth into the abyss by Liliane Lévy-Osbert, International Studies and Documentation, Paris (ISBN 978-2851391056)
• 2000: preface in European Civil War 1917-1945 by Ernst Nolte, Syrtes Publishing, (ISBN 978-2845450134)
• 2006: interview "The truth about the underground" in The Dossier Kadare. Following the truth about the underground by Shaban Sinani, Ismail Kadare (in coll.), Odile Jacob, Paris, p. 141-205 (ISBN 978-2738117403)
• 2008 edition prepared and presented by Stéphane Courtois, Fascism & Totalitarianism, by Ernst Nolte, Robert Laffont, Mouthpieces collection, Paris, 1022 p.
• 2008: chapter "From the French Revolution to the October Revolution" in The Black Book of the French Revolution Renaud Escande et al., Cerf, Paris, (ISBN 978-2204081603)
• 2008: preface "From Babeuf to Lemkin: Genocide and Modernity" in The War of the Vendee and the system of depopulation by Gracchus Babeuf, Cerf, Paris, (ISBN 978-2204087322)
• 2011: afterword in Milestones by Nicolas Berdyaev, Serge Bulgakov, Simon L. Frank, Mikhail Guershenzon, Alexander Izgoev, Bohdan Kistiakovsky, Pyotr Struve, Cerf, Paris, (ISBN 978-2204092715)
• 2011: chapter "Furet and Nolte: for a history of Europe in the 20th century" in François Furet. French Revolution, World War, Communism by Christophe Maillard and Pierre Statius, Cerf, Paris (ISBN 9782204093279)
• 2011: afterword "Neo-Robespierrist historians and killing the memory of the Vendée" in Vendee: From Genocide to memory-cide by Reynald Secher, Cerf, Paris, (ISBN 978-2204095808)

See also

• Sovietology
• R. J. Rummel
• François Furet
• Annie Kriegel

External links

• Official website of Stéphane Courtois
• Class Genocide: definition, description, comparison, Notes from the Holocaust, January 2002.
• Enzo Traverso, "From anticommunism. The history of the 20th century journal by Nolte, Furet and Courtois", in Man and Society, L'Harmattan, 2001, p. 169-194.

Brochures, freely and legally downloadable in PDF

• (Fr) Thorez, Stalin and France. Liberation in the Cold War, Stéphane Courtois, in Materials for the history of our time, 1995, Volume 39, Issue 39-40, p. 24-25
• (Fr) Return to the Soviet-Nazi alliance, 70 years on, Stéphane Courtois, Foundation for Political Innovation, Paris, 2009
• (Fr) Lenin and the destruction of the Russian intelligentsia (extract), Communism and Totalitarianism, Stéphane Courtois, Perrin, Paris, 2009
• (Ro) Courtois at Sighet Stéphane Courtois, Editura Liternet, Bucharest, 2006