And saying that Mao and Stalin's numbers are disputed? Who doesn't know about the Great Leap Forward! And even the Reddest of the Red hate Stalin!
The numbers are heavily disputed. Pretty much no actual historians or sinologists think Mao killed 78 million people or Stalin killed 23 million. These numbers are from Robert Conquest and the Black Book of Communism and even the co-writers have said the numbers are bullshit because the author was intent on making the 100 million mark if the evidence said so or didn't.
This is not to say Mao and Stalin never enacted policies in which mass repression occured and large numbers lost their lives. They did. The Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Holodomor, The Stalinist Purges, many people lost their lives. But the BB of Communism isn't a good source for these numbers nor historians like Dikotter.
Chinese history is more my thing and from what I read, most historians and Sinologists consider the "Excess deaths" of Mao to be around 15 mil (largely due to the hilariously stupid Great Leap Forward) and Stalin around 4-8 mil (Mostly due to Holodomor).
Still horrific numbers though. I mean, to picture 4-8 million people. That is, literally every single person alive today in London, killed.
The only decent commie I can think of was maybe Tito.
A lot of them are a mixed bag honestly.
Lenin imo is the greatest political and tactical mind of the 20th century hands down. The events between Feb-October are just mental and Lenin outplayed everyone from a extremely minority position, even within his own party as most Bolsheviks were opposed to Lenin after the April Thesis laughably claiming he had become a "delusional ultra-left Anarchist". That said, I disagree strongly with Lenin's Terroristic actions during the Civil War. The NEP was also great policy which was copy-pasted by China in the 1980s and because what is now known as "Deng Xiaoping thought" (The best Bolshevik was Bukharin who was the actual mastermind behind the NEP, he was killed by Stalin of course).
Mao is honestly fucking awesome until 1956 where he started to basically go insane. Before 1956 The outcomes China went in the early stages of Maoism are mindboggling. Shit like the Barefoot Doctors liteally saved tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of lives and the program is the basis for a lot of modern NGO and World Health Organisation programs for delivery of Health to rural areas in developing nations today. Also it was Mao who personally created the program that led to the cure of Malaria, Project 523. The Chinese actually have a saying for Mao. "If he died in 1956 he would be the greatest world leader that ever lived. If he died in 1962 he would be considered a good leader who made massive mistakes. Too bad he died in 1976". A great book to read on Early Maoism and really explains the Chinese perspective on Mao is Fanshen.
This chapter especially shows how fucking awful China was before the Revolution and gives context probably to why the Chinese gave in so much to events like the Cultural Revolution.
Dubek was fine though he was ousted by the Soviets in the Hungarian Invasion.
Tito was just a badass motherfucker.
That's pretty much all I can think of.