Stéphane Courtois (; born 25 November 1947) is a French historian and university professor, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies (ICES) in La Roche-sur-Yon, and director of a collection specialized in the history of communist movements and communist states.

The Black Book of Communism, a 1997 book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold millions of copies, and is considered one of the most influential and controversial books written about the history of communism in the 20th century and state socialist regimes.Ronald Grigir Suny. Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography. Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 53, Number 1, 2007, pp. 5−19. "The Black Book may be the single most influential text on the Soviet Union and other state socialist regimes and movements published since The GuLag Archipelago."Ronald Aronso.n Review: Communism's Posthumous Trial Reviewed Work(s): The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression byStéphane Courtois; The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century by François Furet; The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century by Tony Judt; Le Siècle des communismes by Michel Dreyfus. History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May 2003), pp. 222-245 In the first chapter of the book, Courtois argued that Communism and Nazism are similar totalitarian systems and that Communism was responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the 20th century. Courtois' attempt to equate the two has been polemically effective, but controversial due to his numbers and his choice of which countries and events to compare, as well as being revisionist.

Courtois is a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in the Géode (group of study and observation of democracy) at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense. He is also a professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies – ICES. He is editor of the journal Communisme, which he cofounded with Annie Kriegel in 1982, and part of the Cercle de l'Oratoire think tank.

As a student, from 1968 to 1971, Courtois was a Maoist, but he later became a strong supporter of democracy, pluralism, and the rule of law.Christophe Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes. La folle histoire des gardes rouges français, Paris, Plon, 1996, p. 277.

Maoist activism (1968–1971)

Courtois was an activist in the Maoist Marxist–Leninist organization Vive communism from 1968 to 1971, which changed its name in 1969 to Vive la Revolution with Roland Castro. At this time he directed the organisation's bookstore at rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in Paris. He describes himself as having been "anarcho-Maoist," but many "repented" of the extreme left and later became supporters of democracy and multi-party democracy and often anti-communists.Christophe Bourseiller, The Maoists. The mad history of the French Red Guards, Paris, Plon, 1996, p. 277 (Fr).

Communist Party at war and Communisme journal Having taken legal studies and history, he became known in 1980 with the publication of his thesis, the PCF at war under the direction of Annie Kriegel. It was with her that he founded in 1982 the journal Communisme to bring together anticommunist specialists on French communism. After the death of Kriegel, he became the main organiser of the magazine. He was appointed director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he was responsible for the "Group observations and studies of democracy" (GEODE). That period at Communisme was seen as an extremely rich period for research of all kinds, the crucible of important work published in the 1980s.Bruno Groppo and Bernard Pudal, article Three issues under debate in the Century of Communism, ed. de l'Atelier, 2000, paperback Points-Seuil, 2004, p. 107-108 (Fr)

Courtois served as the historical consultant on the controversial 1985 documentary Des terroristes à la retraite, which alleged a conspiracy by the PCF leadership to betray the FTP-MOI resistance group to the French police in 1943. The film accused Boris Holban of betraying Missak Manouchian to the Brigades spéciales. In his interview in the film, Courtois stated: "From summer 1943 on, the Communist Party clearly sought to affirm its superiority within the resistance. To that end, and to reinforce its prestige, it had to have bombings and other armed attacks to publicize. In Paris there was only one group available to carry out such attacks: the foreign combatants. The party leadership had the option of keeping them safe or keeping them in the fight. That was what happened, and we can safely say that they were sacrificed to serve the higher interests of the party". The documentary set off an intense debate in France known as L’Affaire Manouchian. During the affaire, Courtois reversed his position. In the 1989 book Le sang de l'étranger − les immigrés de la MOI dans la Résistance co-written with Adam Rayski and Denis Peschanski, Courtois cleared Holban of the allegation that he was a police informer and concluded that it was "brutally efficient police work" by the Brigades spéciales that led to the mass arrests of the FTP-MOI members in November 1943. ''Le sang de l'étranger had a major impact on the historiography of the French resistance as the book established the majority of the attacks on German forces in the Paris area between April 1942-August 1944 were the work of the FTP-MOI, which had ignored by historians until then in order the make the Resistance appear more French.

Visits to archives of the Comintern in Moscow (1992–1994) Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and of the "Iron Curtain", the Soviet Union broke up in December 1991, the archives of the Comintern were opened not only to Russian historians but also to western researchers.

The opening represented an opportunity for him to access unpublished sources to rewrite the history of the Comintern and of the Communist parties afflicted to it. Until that time, what was known of the Comintern was only what the Soviet leadership wished to be known, countered only by unverifiable assertions of their opponents. Courtois described the historiographical turning point as a "true revolution in documentation".« Chapter 20. − "History of Communism: the documentation revolution" in Communism and Totalitarianism, Stéphane Courtois, Perrin, Paris, 2009, p. 401

For example, a historical study of the PCF had been made for decades not on genuine archival documents but on the basis of stories, such as memoirs published by PCF members, including Jacques Duclos, because the original PCF records were kept not at party headquarters in Paris, but in Moscow, in accordance with the central clauses governing their admission to the Comintern (conditions of admission to the Third International).

In 2006, Courtois wrote a book entitled Communism in France: The revolution in documentation and revised historiography.

He made his first visit to the archives of the Comintern in Moscow in September 1992. Later he made three more visits, the last in December 1994. In 2009, at a conference, Stéphane Courtois said: "I did not go to promote The Black Book of Communism in Russia.... In any case, I do not go back again for quite some time.... I quickly became aware that I was under constant surveillance in the archives".

Courtois gleaned some spectacular information from the archives and in deliberately provoking controversy, which led in the eyes of some at the Communisme journal to a divisive position with the complementary scientific researches there. Since 1993, a large part of the editorial board of Communisme left the journal.

Orientation of works after publication of The Black Book If the historiographic production of Courtois before 1995 mainly concerned the PCF, afterward, it focused more on the Comintern and the history of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In the Black Book, he was concerned with the criminal aspects of the actions of the Comintern. In his book on Eugen Fried, which he cowrote with Annie Kriegel in 1997, the emphasis was more on the control by the Comintern on the national communist parties and the mass anti-fascist organizations such as Amsterdam-Pleyel, Secours Rouge, and the Universal Gathering for peace. In the foreword of Eugen Fried, he indicated that the project initiated in 1984–1985 had to be suspended in 1991 when the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were transferred to the State Archives of the Republic of Russia. "In 1992, Annie Kriegel and Stéphane Courtois were there in Moscow. They made several trips to the Russian capital and brought back thousands of pages on microfilm...."Annie Kriegel and Stéphane Courtois, Eugen Fried, Le Seuil, 1997, p. 7

In a communication to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Courtois defended the thesis that Stalin was perfectly representative of the Soviet regime introduced in the 1917 Revolution led by Lenin, stating: "The fact remains that in the foundation phase of the system, from 1917 to 1953, it was the ideology that dictated the conduct of Lenin and then of Stalin.... Stalin was an authentic Bolshevik — pupil of the school of Leninism.... Stalin was not the obscure apparatchik described by Trotsky, but one of the direct collaborators of Lenin and among the most appreciated for his unwavering support of the leader, his sense of discipline, his composure and exceptional firmness of character, his determination, and his total lack of scruples or compassion in his actions".

After the publication of Eugen Fried, Courtois led many joint editorial projects, such as A clean sweep From the past! History and Memory of Communism in Europe (2002), which came at the end of the Black Book of Communism and provided additions to the book, mostly written by foreign authors, and the Dictionary of Communism (2007). In 2008, he contributed to the Black Book of the French Revolution, in a chapter devoted to the relationship between Jacobinism and Bolshevism.

In 2009, he returned again to the question of communism with the book Communism and totalitarianism, which was a collection of a series of his articles on the subject.

He has also expanded his work to include all totalitarian regimes. He organises many international conferences on this theme and maintains a collection of the Éditions du Seuil and the Éditions du Rocher.

Major works

Methodological influences A student of Kriegel, Courtois said that his book Communism and Totalitarianism (2009) is built on the model of several books by her, including The Bread and the Roses: foundations for a history of socialism (1968) and French communism in the mirror (1974). The methodology, developed by her and adopted by him, consisted of an accumulation of stages of thought of the researcher in the form of texts that are grouped by topic and published regularly.

Taking up the concept of a "history workshop "developed by the historian François Furet, in his eponymous book published in 1982, Stéphane Courtois said that "the serious historian is an artisan who constantly works on the job, because he is dependent on sources, archives, etc.... And of course, these sources, archives, they are constantly changing. Thus, the evolution of this process permits a construction of a united vision more comprehensive and nuanced than at the start.

Communisme (1982–present)

The Black Book of Communism (1997)