Horrifying.

45%, Intermediate. Ugh, I should have done better. . .

I got only 40%, Intermediate.

But of course we all know that they weren't REAL Communists, right?

Sickening.

"R.J. Rummel's Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, surveying various estimates of attrition rates in Soviet camps, finds the typical camp death rate ranged between 10 and 30%. Taking the middle estimate (20%) and using basic arithmetic, one arrives at the 10% figure."

What the crap does that mean?

Hmm, good catch, Brian. Maybe we should write to Professor Caplan?

It means .8^10.

20% death rate per annum means 80% survive each year. Carry it out ten years.

10.7%

So 11% then?

Is 10.7% not "around" 10%?

I'm not interested in arguing, I'm just answering a question about what the math means.

The odds of surviving a 10-year sentence in of Lenin or Stalin's typical slave labor camps were around...
A. 80%.
B. 60%.
C. 30%.
D. 10%.
E. under 3%.
F. under 1%.

Whether you do well or not, it's good for us to be reminded of why winning the Cold War was so important not only for our own security, but for the people who lived under communist governments. Thanks for pointing out the quiz--it was an eye opener for me.

60% - but I think we should all score ourselves an extra 10 points; the communist atrocities were so horrible and varied that its ok if you missed a few of the types of groups murdered....

60% - but I think we should all score ourselves an extra 10 points; the communist atrocities were so horrible and varied that its ok if you missed a few of the types of groups murdered....

60% - but I think we should all score ourselves an extra 10 points; the communist atrocities were so horrible and varied that its ok if you missed a few of the types of groups murdered....

I got an advanced score - which, judging from the amount of reading I do on the topic - disheartened me. A good quiz though - it opened up to me where the blanks are in my knowledge. And there are many!

Ghastly sons of bitches, weren't they?

I got 40% but it would have been lower if the answers didn't hint at the correct answers, since I had relevant knowledge for only a small fraction of the questions.
Hint:assume the worst, unless it's really really extreme

A very good test. I was shocked at how little I knew. Intermediate, but that's nowhere good enough. I didn't underestimate, though.

Intermediate — meaning shockingly low. Jeez.

Thanks for the explanation, mj. Seems to me they could have spent a few extra words clarifying that. :)

Got 50%, but don't feel very 'advanced', even if partial credit was not given for getting a good chunk of individual combo answers right.

This from an engineer/musician, who during residence in Berkeley between '66 and '70 was shouted down at any and all criticism of the Soviet and Chinese murders. The adulation for the Cultural Revolution on Telegraph Avenue was obscene, and plenty of those worshippers are now living high on the hog of tenured academia. Retch.

Since the subject of these holocausts was forbidden for 'polite discussion' among the musicians, and the engineers mostly didn't have deep interest in this history, I spent the next 30 years reading up on it, at random and unguided. The only amusement it has given is the look of shock and horror on the face of people visiting for a tune, and then perusing the bookshelf. Yes - I'm guilty of being on good, even warm social terms with folks who acquiesced or even approved of the actions of the Marxist 'leaders' who just did what they had to do.

Funny how they get away with that, I sure wouldn't hang out with old Nazis.

But amusement isn't the purpose. I just feel it should the business of a citizen to know about these events.

And it sure puts into perspective the yowling of the lefties about U.S. 'atrocities'.

They should be teaching this in the schools.
By the way, those people who shouted you down in Berkeley were and are (if they haven't changed their views) Communists. Not liberals or Leftists. Communists. Of course, it's McCarthyism to call Communists Communists because we all know there's no such thing as a Communist. It's not bad to _be_ a Communist, but it's bad to call someone a Communist. If they had shouted you down for condemning Hitler's murders, everyone would call them Nazis. Not conservatives or Rightists. Nazis. Same thing as far as I'm concerned. Communists and Nazis, I mean. Totalitarians of any stripe are loathsome.

Can't quite think of all of them as Communists, though there must have been plenty of real ones guiding the seething masses. The mindset was more like 'America sucks so whatever opposes it must be great'. It was more a revolt of the spoiled children than an organized movement, but all too many of those brats remain way left in the spectrum. They'd have made a great Socialist Revolutionary party, furnishing energy for the inner-party Leninists to control and eventually purge (except the real SRs did plenty of purging themselves). And many split off to become politically correct yuppies in later years. Some still visit Cuba for a hit of sweet 'what could have been' nostalgia.

37.5%

I wish the ones who visit Cuba and aren't outraged by what they see would stay there.

A fairly knowledgeable Russian friend of mine got 9/23 (skipped the questions about China)
Tough test

50%, and I think anything above 60% would indicate too intimate a knowledge of sheer horror and wickedness.
To be able to know enough to answer each and every one of these questions must leave you weeping.

If they don't belong to an organized Communist party but they still excuse, justify, and ignore Communist genocide, then they are just like the Holocaust deniers who don't belong to a Nazi party (some Holocaust deniers even profess to be libertarians!). And they deserve to be treated with the same contempt.

and if they are truly shocked and have the decency to start calling themselves something else, such as "Greens", then they are OK, at least for people with silly ideas.