Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History? 
Ilya Somin

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people assume the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler. 

But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people—making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

The Vast Deliberate Extinction of Millions

Historian Frank Dikötter, author of Mao’s Great Famine, recently published an article in History Today, summarizing his findings:

“Mao thought he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivized. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labor on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected. A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine.”

What comes out of this detailed dossier is a tale in which Mao emerges the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. 

The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten- kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.

The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought and that mass murder was clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured as opposed to starved to death. 

While the Great Leap Forward is well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by people outside Chin and have had only a modest cultural impact. When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one.

In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a longer time.

Why We so Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward

What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that the most of the victims were Chinese peasants—people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness.

But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today few western intellectuals sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful—perhaps—that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association.

In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made “mistakes” and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth. This reluctance is an obvious fact that the Communist Party still rules China. Although they have repudiated many of Mao’s specific policies, the regime still derives much of its legitimacy from his legacy.

Why It Matters

For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Our continuing historical blind spot about the crimes of Mao and other communist rulers leads us to underestimate the horrors of such policies and makes it more likely that they might be revived in the future. 

Ilya Somin
ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy.