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Some academics have proposed a link between communism as a political ideology and mass killings. In addition, many authors and academics have written about excess deaths under Communist states and mortality rates, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. There is no consensus among genocide scholars and scholars of Communism about whether some or all the events constituted a mass killing. There is also no consensus on a common terminology, and the events have been variously referred to as excess mortality or mass deaths; other terms used to define some of such killings include classicide, crimes against humanity, democide, genocide, politicide, holocaust, and repression. Several authors and academics have postulated potential causes of and factors associated with the occurrences of these killings. Some academics and authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under ostensibly Communist states, although these death toll estimates have received criticism from other academics and authors.
The concept of connecting disparate killings to the status of the Communist states which committed them and the concept of trying to ascribe common causes and factors has been met with both support and criticism from the academic community. Some academics view it as an indictment of communism as an ideology, while other academics view it as being overly simplistic or rooted in anti-communism. Some academics instead attribute the cause of the killings to either the political systems of the Communist states or the leaders of the Communist states. There is also debate over whether or not the famines under Communist states can be considered mass killings. Mass killings by Communist states have been compared to killings by other types of states and ideologies.
Very few leaders of Communist states have been legally prosecuted for mass killings. Memorials, monuments and museums dedicated to the Victims of Communism, a concept proposed by some scholars and historians, have been built in Eastern Europe and Washington, D.C.
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Mass killings under communist regimes