Though communism’s corpses pile up much higher than fascism’s, people find it easy to imagine a decent communist, but not a decent Nazi. We cannot conceive of decency in one who embraced the doctrine of a master race. But we can understand someone who wished to create a world free of oppression, inequality and want. Indeed, this sympathy has made generations blind to the fantastic cruelties of Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and (rather less) Fidel Castro.

The decency of communism’s ideals and the horror of its effects form the basis of Robert Service’s masterly handling of the beginning, progress and (all but) end of communism. Service sees the miseries and tyranny which communists fought against; and he allows credit where it is due, as when he writes of Castro’s regime that ”the poor of the island benefited most from the revolution. Blacks in particular were helped by government efforts to improve conditions.”