EU rejects eastern states' call to outlaw denial of crimes by communist regimes Eastern European states wanted Soviet crimes

'treated according to the same standards' as those of Nazi regimes The European commission has rejected calls from eastern Europe to introduce a socalled double genocide law that would criminalise the denial of crimes perpetrated by communist regimes, in the same way many EU countries ban the denial of the Holocaust. Last week six countries wrote to Viviane Reding, the European justice commissioner, calling for the "public condoning, denial and gross trivialisation of totalitarian crimes" to be punished. Foreign ministers from Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romaniaand the Czech Republic said communist crimes "should be treated according to the same standards" as those of Nazi regimes, notably in those countries with Holocaust denial laws. But the EU executive will say in a report due tomorrow that opinion is too divided on the matter and that there is no legal basis allowing Brussels to act. "There is no consensus on it. The different member states have wildly differing approaches," EU justice spokesman Matthew Newman told the Guardian. He said the commission takes the issue "very seriously", but: "At this stage, the conditions to make a legislative proposal have not been met. The commission will continue to keep this matter under review." The east European countries point to the EU's ability to make laws relating to "particularly serious" cross-border crimes and a separate EU decision permitting the crafting of rules targeting racism and xenophobia. But the commission says neither legal instrument mentions totalitarianism and rejects the idea of double genocide. "The bottom line is, obviously, what they did was horrendous, but communist regimes did not target ethnic minorities," said Newman. According to Lithuania, whose foreign minister leads the campaign to create a new law, the EU's understanding of genocide should be extended to include crimes against groups defined by "social status or political convictions". Andrius Grikienis, a spokesman for Lithuania's mission to the EU, said: "During the first years of Soviet occupation, Lithuania lost more than 780,000 of its residents. 444,000 fled Lithuania or were repatriated, 275,697 were deported to the gulag or exile, 21,556 resistance fighters and their supporters were killed and 25,000 died on the front." By comparison, he said: "More than 200,000 citizens of Jewish origin were killed by Nazis and their collaborators." The commission is also uneasy about wading into a highly controversial area. A number of western EU countries oppose the proposal, suggesting that it is a thinlyveiled attempt at rehabilitation of domestic collaborators while antisemitism remains a live issue on the streets and in the media in the east. On 25 November, the ambassadors to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, of seven EU states including the UK sent a letter to the country's president complaining about a

newspaper article by an interior ministry historian, Petras Stankeras, that described the Holocaust as a "legend". In the letter, they complained about how a court in May had ruled that the swastika is a "traditional Lithuanian symbol" while "spurious attempts are made to equate the uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which, though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intention or result". Efraim Zuroff, the Nazi-hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Israel office, describes the effort by the six eastern states as a "false symmetry". "We have no problem with a day of commemoration for communist crimes, and indeed, something should be done, but the Holocaust was a unique tragedy in history," he said. "For all the terrible crimes of the USSR, you can't compare the people who built Auschwitz with the people who liberated it. Nazi Germany would probably not have been defeated if it weren't for Russia."

Communism vs Nazism Communism and Nazism are two different political ideologies. They oppose each other and one can come across numerous differences between the two. Some people now a days do not see much difference between the two. But this not true and the two are distinct in all aspects. The communists have a different thinking of politics and economy than the Nazis. Communism is a socio economic ideology that aims at a classless, egalitarian, and a stateless society. The ideology is based on a common ownership and it is the community that controls the resources or the means of production. Nazism or National Socialism is a totalitarian ideology that was practised by the Nazi Party or the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazism became so popular under Adolf Hitler. Communist ideology can be attributed to Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Communism stands for a free society where all are equal and every one can participate in the decision making process. It stands for a class less society and has no barriers of any religion, caste or state. A fascist political system, Nazism stands for socialist policies but also ensures that a wealthy class stays at the helm of power.

While Nazism believes in extreme nationalism, ethnic divisions and a firm government, communism does not have such prepositions and it focuses on equality. While communism is focussed on a classless society, Nazism is focussed on a racist society. In German Nazis considered Aryan race to be superior to all others. While Communism is on the far left, Nazism is considered to be far right. Communism can be said to be having foundations in some strong political ideology. On the other hand, Nazism is not based on any strong political ideology but only based on racial divide. Summary: 1.Communism is a socio economic ideology that aims at a classless, egalitarian, and a stateless society. Nazism or National Socialism is a totalitarian ideology that was practised by the Nazi Party or the National Socialist be attributed German to Karl Marx Workers and Fredrick Party. Engels. 2.Nazism became so popular under Adolf Hitler. Communist ideology can 3.Communism stands for a free society where all are equal and every one can participate in the decision making process. Nazism stands for socialist policies but also ensures that a wealthy class stays at the helm of power. 4. While Communism is on the far left, Nazism is considered to be far right.
Political violence and violent societies[edit]
Both Stalinism and Nazism utilized mass violence. Both the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany utilized internment camps led by agents of the state - the NKVD in the Soviet Union and the [18] SS in Nazi Germany. Both regimes engaged in violence against minorities based on xenophobia the xenophobic violence of the Nazis was outspoken but rationalized as being against "asocial" elements while the xenophobic violence of the Stalinists was disguised as being against "socially [19] harmful" elements - that was a term that targeted diaspora nationalities. Both Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were violent societies where mass violence was accepted by the state, such as in the Great Terror of 1937 to 1938 in the Soviet Union and the [20] Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories in World War II. The Stalinist Soviet Union established "special settlements" where the "socially harmful" or "socially dangerous" who included ex[21] convicts, criminals, vagrants, the disenfranchized and "declassed elements" were expelled to. The "special settlements" were largely in Siberia, the far north, the Urals, or other inhospitable [22] territories. In July 1933, the Soviet Union made a mass arrest of 5000 Romani people effectively on the basis of their ethnicity, who were deported that month to the "special settlements" in Western [22] Siberia. In 1935, the Soviet Union arrested 160,000 homeless people and juvenile delinquents and [23] sent many of them to NKVD labour colonies where they did forced labour.
[18]

Similar to Nazism, Stalinism in practice in the Soviet Union pursued ethnic deportations from the 1930s to the early 1950s, with a total of 3 million Soviet citizens being subjected to ethnic-based [24] resettlement. The first major ethnic deportation took place from December 1932 to January 1933 during which some 60,000 Kuban Cossacks were collectively criminally charged as a whole with [25] association with resistance to socialism and affiliation with Ukrainian nationalism. From 1935 to 1936, the Soviet Union deported Soviet citizens of Polish and German origins living in the western districts of Ukraine, and Soviet citizens of Finnish origins living on the Finland-Soviet Union [25] [25] border. These deportations from 1935 to 1936 affected tens of thousands of families. From September to October 1937, Soviet authorities deported the Korean minority from its Far Eastern [25] region that bordered on Japanese-controlled Korea. Soviet authorities claimed the territory was "rich soil for the Japanese to till" - implying the Soviet suspicion that the Koreans could potentially join [25] forces with the Japanese forces to unite the land with Japanese-held Korea. Over 170,000 Koreans were deported to remote parts of Soviet Central Asia from September to October 1937. These ethnically-based deportations reflected a new trend in Stalinist policy a "Soviet xenophobia" based on ideological grounds that suspected that these people were susceptible to foreign capitalist influence, [25] and based on a resrugent Russian nationalism. After Nazi Germany declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet Union initiated another major round of ethnic deportations. The first group targeted were Soviet Germans, between September 1941 and February 1942, 900,000 people - over 70 percent of the entire Soviet German [26] community - were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia in mass operations. A second wave of mass deportations took place between November 1943 and May 1944 in which Soviet authorities expelled six ethnic groups (the Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tartars, Ingush, Karachai, and Kalmyks) that [27] numbered 900,000. There were also smaller-scale operations involving ethnic cleansing of diaspora minorities during and after World War II, in which tens of thousands of Crimean Bulgarians, Greeks, Iranians, Khemshils, Kurds, and Meskhetian Turks were deported from the Black Sea and [27] Transcaucasian border regions. Two ethnic groups that were specifically targeted for persecution by Stalin's Soviet Union were the [27] Chechens and the Ingush. Unlike the other nationalities that could be suspected of connection to foreign states that had their nationality, the Chechens and the Ingush were completely indigenous [27] people of the Soviet Union. Instead, the Soviet Union claimed that these peoples' culture did not fit in with that of the Soviet Union as a whole - such as accusing Chechens of being associated with "banditism" - and claimed that the Soviet Union had to intervene in order to "remake" and "reform" [27] their culture. In practice this meant heavily-armed punitive operations carried out against Chechen "bandits" that failed to achieve its forced assimilation, resulting in Soviet authorities in 1944 carrying out a massive ethnic cleansing operation that arrested and deported over 500,000 Chechens and Ingush from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Kahzakstan in order to "relieve" the Russian minorities [28] (30 percent of the population) of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. The deportations of the Chechens and Ingush also involved the outright massacre of thousands of people, and severe conditions placed upon the deportees - they were put in unsealed train cars, with little to no food for a four-week journey [29] during which many died from hunger and exhaustion.

German and Soviet soldiers during the official transfer of Brest to Soviet control in front of picture of Stalin in the aftermath of the invasion and partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

The main difference between Nazi and Stalinist deportations was in their purpose: while Nazi Germany sought ethnic cleansing to allow settlement by Germans into the cleansed territory, Stalin's Soviet Union pursued ethnic cleansing in order to remove minorities from strategically important [30] areas.

Concentration camps[edit]
Works by historians such as Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber and others in the 1980s compared the policies of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and drew a parallel between the concentration camp system [31] in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

The declaration both called for condemnation of communism, education about communist crimes, prosecution of communist criminals by establishing an international court within the EU for communist crimes, construction of a memorial to the victims of world communism, and reduction of pensions and social security benefits for communist perpetrators. The declaration stated that: "Communist regimes have committed, and are in some cases still committing, crimes against humanity in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in other countries where communism is still alive" "Crimes against humanity are not subject to statutory limitations according to international law; however, the justice done to perpetrators of Communist crimes over the past 20 years has been extremely unsatisfactory" "We must not deny the tens of millions of victims of Communism their right to justice" "Since crimes against humanity committed by the communist regimes do not fall under the jurisdiction of existing international courts, we call for the creation of a new international court with a seat within the EU for the crimes of communism. Communist crimes against humanity must be condemned by this court in a similar way as the Nazi crimes were condemned and sentenced by the Nuremberg tribunal, and as the crimes committed in former Yugoslavia were condemned and sentenced" "Not punishing the communist criminals means disregard of and thus weakening of international law" "As an act of reparation and restitution, European countries must introduce legislation that equalizes the pensions and social security benefits of perpetrators of communist crimes so that they are equal to or smaller than those of their victims" "As democracy must learn to be capable of defending itself, Communism needs to be condemned in a similar way as Nazism was. We are not equating the respective crimes of Nazism and Communism, including the Gulag, the Laogai and the Nazi concentration camps. They should each be studied and judged on their own terrible merits. Communist ideology and communist rule contradict the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. Just as we are not willing to relativise crimes of Nazism, we must not accept a relativisation of crimes of Communism." "We call upon EU member states to increase the awareness raising and education about crimes of communism; we remind them of the need to implement, without further delay, the Resolution of the European Parliament (2 April 2009) to mark 23 August as the European-wide Day of Remembrance of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes."

"We call upon the European Commission and European Council of Justice and Home Affairs to adopt a Framework Decision introducing a pan-European ban on excusing, denying or trivializing the crimes of communism." "The creation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, as supported by the European Parliament and the EU Council in 2009, must be completed at EU level. Individual governments must live up to their commitments regarding the work of the Platform." "As an act of recognition of the victims and respect for the immense suffering inflicted upon half of the continent, Europe must erect a memorial to the victims of world Communism, following the [3] example of the memorial in the USA in Washington, D.C."

Terminology
Communist regimes "Communist regimes" refers to those countries who declared themselves to be socialist states under the Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, or Maoist definition (in other words, "communist states") at some point in their history. Scholars use several different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of [3][4] noncombatants. The following have been used to describe killing by Communist governments: Genocide under the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide does not apply to the mass killing of political and social groups. Protection of political groups was eliminated from the UN [5] resolution after a second vote, because many states, including Stalin's USSR, anticipated that [6] clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances. Politicide the term "politicide" is used to describe the killing of political or economic groups that [7] would otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention. Manus I. Midlarsky uses the term "politicide" to describe an arc of mass killings from the western parts of the Soviet Union to China [8] and Cambodia. In his book The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century Midlarsky raises [9] similarities between the killings of Stalin and Pol Pot. Democide R. J. Rummel coined the term "democide", which includes genocide, politicide, [10] and mass murder. Helen Fein has termed the mass state killings in the Soviet Union and [11] Cambodia as "genocide and democide." Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago have shown the significance of terminology in that, depending on the use of democide (generalised statesponsored killing) or politicide(eliminating groups who are politically opposed) as the criterion for inclusion in a data-set, statistical analyses seeking to establish a connection between mass killings can produce very different results, including the significance or otherwise of regime [page needed][12] type. Crime against humanity Jacques Semelin and Michael Mann believe that "crime against humanity" is more appropriate than "genocide" or "politicide" when speaking of violence by [14] Communist regimes. Classicide Michael Mann has proposed the term "classicide" to mean the "intended mass [15] killing of entire social classes". Terror Stephen Wheatcroft notes that, in the case of the Soviet Union, terms such as "the terror", "the purges", and "repression" (the latter mostly in common Russian) colloquially refer to [4] the same events and he believes the most neutral terms are "repression" and "mass killings". Mass killing this term has been defined by Benjamin Valentino as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants", where a "massive number" is defined as at least 50,000 [16] intentional deaths over the course of five years or less. He applies this definition to the cases of
[13]

Stalin's USSR, the PRC under Mao, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, while admitting that mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by regimes in North [17] Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

Red Holocaust still small pile of stones, commemorating the victims of communism, as such the first memorial in Germany (Jimmy Fell, 2011)

Communist holocaust the United States Congress has referred to the mass killings [18][19] collectively as "an unprecedented imperial communist holocaust" while the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation established by the United States Congress refers to this [20] subject as the "Communist holocaust". The term "Red Holocaust" has been used by German historian Horst Mller;Steven Rosefielde has published a book on this subject titled Red [21][22] Holocaust.

Proposed causes
List of claims linking communism and mass killings
Theories, such as those of R. J. Rummel, that propose communism as a significant causative factor in [23] mass killings have attracted scholarly dispute; this article does not discuss academic acceptance of such theories. Klas-Gran Karlsson writes that "Ideologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes independently. However, individuals, collectives and states that have defined themselves as communist have committed crimes in the name of communist ideology, or without naming communism [24] as the direct source of motivation for their crimes." According to Rudolph Joseph Rummel, the killings done by communist regimes can be explained with [25] the marriage between absolute power and an absolutist ideology Marxism. "Of all religions, secular and otherwise," Rummel positions Marxism as "by far the bloodiest bloodier than the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. In practice, Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal prison camps and murderous forced labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial [26] executions and fraudulent show trials, outright mass murder and genocide." He writes that in practice the Marxists saw the construction of their utopia as "a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality and, as in a real war, noncombatants would unfortunately get caught in the battle. There would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, 'wreckers', intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, the rich and landlords. As in a war, millions might die, but these deaths would be justified by the end, as in the defeat of Hitler in World War II. To [26] the ruling Marxists, the goal of a communist utopia was enough to justify all the deaths." In his book Red Holocaust, Steven Rosefielde argues that communism's internal contradictions "caused to be killed" approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more, and that this "Red Holocaust" the peacetime mass killings and other related crimes against humanity perpetrated by Communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot should be the centerpiece of any net assessment of communism. He states that the aforementioned [27] leaders are "collectively guilty of holocaust-scale felonious homicides."

Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism, but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Vladimir Lenin, who personally ordered the [28] killing of local groups of class enemy hostages. Alexander Yakovlev, architect of perestroika and glasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political Repression, elaborates on this point, stating that "The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, [29] and all the rest." Historian Robert Gellately concurs, saying: "To put it another way, Stalin initiated [30] very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed." Said Lenin to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: "If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of [31] revolution is that?" Anne Applebaum asserts that, "without exception, the Leninist belief in the one-party state was and is characteristic of every communist regime," and "the Bolshevik use of violence was repeated in every Communist revolution." Phrases said by Lenin and Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky were deployed all over the world. She notes that as late as 1976,Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed a "Red Terror" in [32] Ethiopia. In The Lost Literature of Socialism, literary historian George G. Watson saw socialism as conservative, a reaction against liberalism and an attempt to return to antiquity and hierarchy. He states that the writings of Friedrich Engels and others show that "the Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called [33] them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history." Watson's claims have been criticised by Robert Grant for "dubious evidence", arguing that "what Marx and Engels are calling for is ... at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson's citations, that actual mass [34] killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere 'absorption' or 'assimilation', is in question." Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Pipes, and John N. Gray role of communism in books for a popular audience.
[35] [36] [37]

have written about theories regarding the

List of claims relating to a failure in the rule of law or economic conditions as cause
Eric D. Weitz says that the mass killing in communist states are a natural consequence of the failure of the rule of law, seen commonly during periods of social upheaval in the 20th century. For both communist and non-communist mass killings, "genocides occurred at moments of extreme social [38] crisis, often generated by the very policies of the regimes." They are not inevitable but are political [38] decisions. Stephen Hicks of Rockford College ascribes the violence characteristic of twentiethcentury socialist rule to these collectivist regimes' abandonment of protections of civil rights and rejection of the values of civil society. Hicks writes that whereas "in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives", in socialism "practice has time and again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships prior to the twentieth century. [39] Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale." The Black Book of Communism, a set of academic essays on mass killings under Communist [40][not in regimes, details "'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989". citation given][41] Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality"Communist

regimes ... turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government" [43] criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.

[42]

and says that this

Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by Communists to economically [44] dispossess large numbers of people. "Social transformations of this speed and magnitude have been associated with mass killing for two primary reasons. First, the massive social dislocations produced by such changes have often led to economic collapse, epidemics, and, most important, widespread famines. ... The second reason that communist regimes bent on the radical transformation of society have been linked to mass killing is that the revolutionary changes they have pursued have clashed inexorably with the fundamental interests of large segments of their populations. Few people [45] have proved willing to accept such far-reaching sacrifices without intense levels of coersion." Michael Mann writes: "The greatest Communist death rates were not intended but resulted from gigantic policy mistakes worsened by factionalism, and also somewhat by callous or revengeful views [46] of the victims." According to Jacques Semelin, "communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and [47] recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire."

Other claims
Influence of national cultures
Martin Malia called Russian exceptionalism and the War Experience general reasons for barbarity.
[48]

Secular values
Some proponents of traditional ethical standards and religious faith argue that the killings were at least partly the result of a weakening of faith and the unleashing of the radical values of the European Enlightenment upon the modern world. Observing this kind of trend in critical scholarship, the University of Oklahoma political scientist Allen D. Hertzke zooms in on the ideas of British Catholic writer and historian Paul Johnson and writes that

[A] shift in intellectual mood has come from the critique of the perceived failures and blinders of the secular project. To be sure, this critique is not universally shared, but a vast scholarship, along with a proliferating array of opinion journals and think tank symposia, catalog the fallout from the abandonment of transcendent societal anchors. Epitomizing this thought is Paul Johnson's magisterial book Modern Times, which attacks the common Enlightenment assumption that less religious faith necessarily equals more human freedom or democracy. The collapse of the religious impulse among the educated classes in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, he argues, left a vacuum that was filled by politicians wielding power under the banner of totalitarian ideologies whether 'blood and soil' Fascism or atheistic Communism. Thus the attempt to live without God made idols of politics and produced the century's 'gangster statesmen' Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot whose 'unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind' unleashed unimaginable horrors. Or as T.S. Eliot puts it, 'If you will not have God (and he [49] is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.'

Personal responsibility
The Russian and world history scholar John M. Thompson describes the system of terror developed during Stalin's time as "puzzling"; surveying Russian history, he posits the height of the killings in the

Soviet Union in the 1930s as a function of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's personality specifically contending that

Attempts to explain this nightmarish period as Stalin's consolidation and reshaping of power, or the cleansing of the party as an evolving component of the Stalinist system somehow run amok, or as Stalin's coldly calculated effort to ready the country for war and ensure that he would have a free hand in foreign policy are, singly or even taken together, simply not convincing. Since Stalin destroyed both the records and most of the high officials involved, we will probably never know precisely what led to the purges and terror. Rational and policy considerations undoubtedly there were, but any persuasive explanation of this era must take account of Stalin's personality and outlook. Much of what occurred only makes sense if it stemmed in part from the disturbed mentality, pathological cruelty, and extreme paranoia of Stalin himself. Insecure, despite having established a dictatorship over the party and country, hostile and defensive when confronted with criticism of the excesses of collectivization and the sacrifices required by high-tempo industrialization, and deeply suspicious that past, present, and even yet unknown future opponents were plotting against him, Stalin began to act as a person beleaguered. He [50] soon struck back at enemies, real or imaginary.

Historian Helen Rappaport describes Nikolay Yezhov, the bureaucrat in charge of the NKVD during the Great Purge, as a physically diminutive figure of "limited intelligence" and "narrow political understanding.... Like other instigators of mass murder throughout history, [he] compensated for his [51] lack of physical stature with a pathological cruelty and the use of brute terror."

Comparison to other mass killings

Daniel Goldhagen argues that 20th century Communist regimes "have killed more people than any [52] other regime type." Other scholars in the fields of Communist studies and genocide studies, such as Steven Rosefielde, Benjamin Valentino, and R.J. Rummel, have come to similar [2][26][53] conclusions. Rosefielde states that it is possible the "Red Holocaust" killed more noncombatants than "Ha Shoah" and "Japan's Asian holocaust" combined, and "was at least as heinous, given the singularity of Hitler's genocide." Rosefielde also notes that "while it is fashionable to mitigate the Red Holocaust by observing that capitalism killed millions of colonials in the twentieth century, primarily through man-made famines, no inventory of such felonious negligent homicides comes close [53] to the Red Holocaust total."

States where mass killings have occurred

Soviet Union
After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives became available, containing official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these [54] categories. Estimates on the number of deaths brought about by Stalin's rule are hotly debated by scholars in the [55][56] field of Soviet and communist studies. The published results vary depending on the time when the estimate was made, on the criteria and methods used for the estimates, and sources available for estimates. Some historians attempt to make separate estimates for different periods of the Soviet [57][full citation needed][58][full citation history, with casualties for the Stalinist period varying from 8 to 61 million.

needed][59][full citation needed][60][page needed][61][page needed][62][page needed]

Several scholars, among them Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, former Politburomember Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev and the director of Yale's "Annals of Communism" series Jonathan Brent, put the death toll at about 20 [63][64][65][66][67][68][69] million. Robert Conquest, in the latest revision (2007) of his book The Great Terror, estimates that while exact numbers will never be certain, the communist leaders of the USSR [70] were responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths. According to Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Stalin's regime can be charged with causing the "purposive deaths" of about a million people, although the number of deaths caused by the regime's "criminal [4] neglect" and "ruthlessness" was considerably higher, and perhaps exceed Hitler's. Wheatcroft excludes all famine deaths as "purposive deaths," and claims those that do qualify fit more closely the [4] category of "execution" rather than "murder." However, some of the actions of Stalin's regime, not only those during the Holodomor but also Dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular [71] [72] [73] ethnic groups, can be considered as genocide, at least in its loose definition. Genocide scholar Adam Jones claims that "there is very little in the record of human experience to match the violence unleashed between 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, and 1953, when Joseph Stalin died and the Soviet Union moved to adopt a more restrained and largely non-murderous domestic policy." He notes the exceptions being the Khmer Rouge (in relative terms) and Mao's rule in [74] China (in absolute terms).

Red Terror
Main articles: Red Terror, Decossackization, and Lenin's Hanging Order During the Russian Civil War, both sides unleashed terror campaigns (the Red and White Terrors). The Red Terror culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people" [75][copyright violation?][volume & issue needed][76][77][78] by the political police, the Cheka. Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any [79] alleged counter-revolutionary provocation. Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as theKronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of [80] [81][82] thousands of executions." A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed. The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, [83] and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth. In the early months of [84][85][verification needed] 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed and many more deported [86] after their villages were razed to the ground.

Great Purge (Yezhovshchina)

Main article: Great Purge Stalin's attempts to solidify his position as leader of the Soviet Union lead to an escalation in detentions and executions of various people, climaxing in 193738 (a period sometimes referred to as the "Yezhovshchina," or Yezhov era), and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. Around 700,000 of [87] these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others perished from beatings and [88] torture while in "investigative custody" and in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure and [89] overwork. Arrests were typically made citing counter-revolutionary laws, which included failure to report treasonous actions and, in an amendment added in 1937, failing to fulfill one's appointed duties. In the cases investigated by the State Security Department of the NKVD (GUGB NKVD) October 1936 [90] November 1938, at least 1,710,000 people were arrested and 724,000 people executed.

Vynnytsa, Ukraine, June 1943. Mass graves dating from 193738 opened up and hundreds of bodies exhumed for identification by family members.[91]

Regarding the persecution of clergy, Michael Ellman has stated that "...the 193738 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify [73] as genocide". Citing church documents,Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over [92] 100,000 priests, monks and nuns were executed during this time. Former "kulaks" and their families made up the majority of victims, with 669,929 people arrested and [93] 376,202 executed.

National operations of the NKVD

Main article: National operations of the NKVD In 1930s, the NKVD conducted a series of national operations, which targeted some "national [73] contingents" suspected in counter-revolutionary activity. A total of 350,000 were arrested and [94] 247,157 were executed. Of these, the Polish operation, which targeted the members of already nonexisting Polska Organizacja Wojskowa appears to have been the largest, with 140,000 arrests and [73] 111,000 executions. Although these operation might well constitute genocide as defined by the UN [73] [94] convention, or "a mini-genocide" according to Montefiore, there is as yet no authoritative ruling on [73] the legal characterisation of these events.

Great purge in Mongolia

Main article: Stalinist repressions in Mongolia In the summer and autumn of 1937, Joseph Stalin sent NKVD agents to the Mongolian People's [95] [96] [97] Republic and engineered a Mongolian Great Terror in which some 22,000 and 35,000 people [96] were executed. Around 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas.

Soviet killings during World War II

Main articles: Katyn Massacre, NKVD prisoner massacres, and Soviet war crimes

Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lviv, June 1941.

In September 1939, following the Soviet invasion of Poland, NKVD task forces started removing [98] "Soviet-hostile elements" from the conquered territories. The NKVD systematically practiced torture, [99][100] which often resulted in death. The most notorious killings occurred in the spring of 1940, when the NKVD executed some 21,857 Polish POWs and intellectual leaders in what has become known as the Katyn [101][102][103] massacre. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, 150,000 Polish [104][105] citizens perished due to Soviet repression during the war.

Plaque on the building of Government of Estonia, Toompea, commemorating government members killed by communist terror

Executions were also carried out after the annexation of the Baltic states. And during the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners [107] and political opponents by the tens of thousands before fleeing from the advancing Axis forces.

[106]

People's Republic of China

Main article: History of the People's Republic of China (1949 1976) The Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949, when Chinese communist revolution ended a long and bloody civil war between communists and nationalists. There is a general consensus among historians that after Mao Zedong seized power, his policies and political purges caused directly [108][109] or indirectly the deaths of tens of millions of people. Based on the Soviets' experience, Mao considered violence necessary to achieve an ideal society derived from Marxism and planned and [110][111] executed violence on a grand scale.

Land reform and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries

Main article: Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries The first large-scale killings under Mao took place during land reform and the counterrevolutionary campaign. In official study materials published in 1948, Mao envisaged that "one-tenth of the [111] peasants" (or about 50,000,000) "would have to be destroyed" to facilitate agrarian reform. Actual [110][112] numbers killed in land reform are believed to have been lower, but at least one million. The suppression of counterrevolutionaries targeted mainly former Kuomintang officials and [113] intellectuals suspected of disloyalty. At least 712,000 people were executed, 1,290,000 were [114] imprisoned in labor camps and 1,200,000 were "subject to control at various times."

The Great Leap Forward

Main article: Great Leap Forward Benjamin Valentino says that the Great Leap Forward was a cause of the Great Chinese Famine and [115] that the worst effects of the famine were steered towards the regime's enemies. Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any earlier campaign died in the [115] greatest numbers, as they were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food. In Mao's Great Famine, historian Frank Diktter writes that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of [116] human history." His research in local and provincial Chinese archives indicates the death toll was at least 45 million, and that "In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people [117] to death." In a secret meeting at Shanghai in 1959, Mao issued the order to procure one third of all grain from the countryside. He said: When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is [117] better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill. Diktter estimates that at [118] least 2.5 million people were summarily killed or tortured to death during this period.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Main article: Cultural Revolution

Sinologists Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals estimate that between 750,000 and 1.5 [119] million people were killed in the violence of the Cultural Revolution, in rural China alone. Mao's Red [120] Guards were given carte blanche to abuse and kill the revolution's enemies. For example, in [121] August 1966, over 100 teachers were murdered by their students in western Beijing alone.

Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea)

See also: Khmer Rouge

Skulls of victims of the Khmer Rougeregime in Cambodia.

Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, notes that, although Cambodian leaders declared adherence to an exotic version of agrarian communist doctrine, the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime [122] resembles more a phenomenon of national socialism, or fascism. Daniel Goldhagen explains that the Khmer Rouge were xenophobic because they believed the Khmer were "the one authentic people [123] capable of building true communism." Sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide [124] as "the purest genocide of the Cold Warera". The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after [125] the end of the Vietnam War. At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge, while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and [126] starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million. Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge) experienced serious hardships due to the effects of war and disrupted economic activity. According to Michael Vickery, 740,800 people in Cambodia in a population of about 7 million died due to disease, overwork, and political [127] repression. Other estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million and it is described by the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last [128] century." Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,112,829 [127] victims of execution." Steven Rosefielde claims that Democratic Kampuchea was the deadliest of all communist regimes on a per capita basis, primarily because it "lacked a viable productive core" and "failed to set boundaries [129] on mass murder." In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide [130][131][132] tribunal. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects [130] by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not charged with genocide. He will face Cambodian and foreign judges at the [133] special genocide tribunal.

Infants were fatally smashed against theChankiri Tree (Killing Tree) at Choeung Ek, Cambodia.[134]

Others
Mass killings have also occurred in Vietnam, North Korea and Romania. It has been suggested that there may also have been other mass killings (on a smaller scale) in communist states such as Bulgaria and East Germany, although lack of documentation prevents definitive judgement [138] about the scale of these events and the motives of the perpetrators. According to Benjamin Valentino, most regimes that described themselves as Communist did not [2] commit mass killings. However, some mass killings may have occurred in some Eastern European countries, although insufficient documentary evidence makes it impossible to make a definitive [139] judgement about the scale, intentionality and the causes of those events.
[135] [136] [137]

Bulgaria
Between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of [138] agricultural collectivization and political repression.

East Germany
Between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part [138] of political repression by the Soviet Union.

Romania
Further information: Communist Romania Between 60,000 and 300,000 people may have been killed in Romania beginning in 1945 as part of [138] agricultural collectivization and political repression.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Further information: North Korea According to R.J. Rummel, forced labor, executions, and concentration camps were responsible for [140] over one million deaths in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 1948 to 1987; others [141] have estimated 400,000 deaths in concentration camps alone. Pierre Rigoulot estimates 100,000 executions, 1.5 million deaths through concentration camps and slave labor, 500,000 deaths from [142] famine, and 1.3 million killed in the Korean war. Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s famine and that there [143] were 600,000 to 850,000 excess deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. The famine, which claimed as many as one million lives, has been described as the result of the economic policies of the [144] [145] North Korean government, and as deliberate "terror-starvation". In 2009, Steven Rosefielde stated that the Red Holocaust "still persists in North Korea" as Kim Jong Il "refuses to abandon mass [146] killing."

Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Further information: North Vietnam In the early 1950s, the Communist government in North Vietnam launched a land reform program, [147] which, according to Steven Rosefielde, was "aimed at exterminating class enemies." Victims were [148] chosen in an arbitrary manner, following a quota of four to five percent. Torture was used on a wide [148] scale, so much so that by 1954 Ho Chi Minhbecame concerned, and had it banned. It is estimated [148] [147] that some 50,000 to 172,000 people perished in the campaigns against wealthy farmers and

landowners. Rosefielde discusses much higher estimates that range from 200,000 to 900,000, which [147] includes summary executions of National People's Party members.

People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Main article: Red Terror (Ethiopia) Amnesty International estimates that a total of half a million people were killed during the Red Terror of [149][150][151] 1977 and 1978. During the terror groups of people were herded into churches that were then [152] burned down, and women were subjected to systematic rape by soldiers. The Save the Children Fund reported that the victims of the Red Terror included not only adults, but 1,000 or more children, mostly aged between eleven and thirteen, whose corpses were left in the streets of Addis [149] Ababa. Mengistu Haile Mariamhimself is alleged to have killed political opponents with his bare [153] hands.

Hungary
See also: Red Terror (Hungary), People's Republic of Hungary, and House of Terror During the period of the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 the Lenin Boys committed crimes against the political opponents. After the Word War II, the communist State Protection Authority maintained concentration camps and committed mass genocides.

Controversies
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Main article: Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Although it is frequently considered as an example of communist genocide, the Democratic Republic [12] of Afghanistan represents a borderline case, according to Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago. Prior to the Soviet invasion, the PDPA executed between 10,000 and 27,000 people, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi [154][155][156] prison. After the invasion in 1979, the Soviets installed the puppet government of Babrak Karmal, but it was never clearly stabilized as a communist regime and was in a constant state of war. By 1987, about 80% of the country's territory was permanently controlled by neither the proCommunist government (and supporting Soviet troops) nor by the armed opposition. To tip the balance, the Soviet Union used a tactic that was a combination of "scorched earth" policy and "migratory genocide": by systematically burning the crops and destroying villages in rebel provinces, as well as by reprisal bombing of entire villages suspected of harbouring or supporting the resistance, the Soviets tried to force the local population to move to the Soviet controlled territory, thereby [157] depriving the armed opposition of their support. By the time the Soviets withdrew in 1988, 1 to 1.5 million people had been killed, mostly Afghan civilians, and one-third of Afghanistan's population had [158][not in citation given] been displaced. M. Hassan Kakar argued that "the Afghans are among the latest [159] victims of genocide by a superpower." Mass graves of executed prisoners have been exhumed [160] dating back to the Soviet era.

Soviet famine of 19321933

Main articles: Soviet famine of 19321933, Holodomor, Holodomor genocide question, and Dekulakization Within the Soviet Union, forced changes in agricultural policies (collectivization) and droughts caused [161][dead link][162][163][164] the Soviet famine of 19321933. The famine was most severe in the Ukrainian SSR, where it is often referenced as the Holodomor. A significant portion of the famine victims (33.5

million) were Ukrainians while the total number of victims in the Soviet Union is estimated to be 6 8 [165][166][verification needed][167] millions. Some scholars have argued that the Stalinist policies that caused the famine may have been designed [168] as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, and thus may fall under the legal definition of [161][162][169][170][171] genocide (see Holodomor genocide question). Economist Michael Ellman argues that the actions of the Soviet regime from 193034 constitutes "a series of crimes against [73] humanity." Benjamin Valentino notes that "there is strong evidence that Soviet authorities used hunger as a weapon to crush peasant resistance to collectivization" and that "deaths associated with [172] these kinds of policies meet the criteria for mass killing." Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, asserts that in 1933 "Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Ukraine" through a [173] "heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe's era of mass killing." Ukraine under Yuschenko's administration (20042010) has tried to make the world recognize the [174] [175] famine as a genocide, a move which was supported by a number of foreign governments. The Russian government has vehemently rejected the idea, accusing Yuschenko of politicization of the [176] tragedy, outright propaganda, and fabrication of documents. In 2010, Ukrainian president Yanukovich reversed Yuschenko's policies on Holodomor and, currently, both Ukraine and Russia consider the Holodomor a common tragedy of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, caused by "Stalin's totalitarian regime", rather than a deliberate act of genocide that targeted ethnic [177] Ukrainians. In a draft resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared the famine was caused by the "cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime" and was responsible for the deaths of "millions of innocent people" in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia. Relative to its population, Kazakhstan is believed to have been the most adversely [177][178] affected. Regarding the Kazakh case, Michael Ellman states that it "seems to be an example of negligent genocide which falls outside the scope of the UN Convention (Schabas 2000, pp. 226 [73] 228)."

Mass deportations of ethnic minorities

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union The Soviet government during Joseph Stalin's rule conducted a series of deportations on an enormous scale that significantly affected the ethnic map of the USSR. Deportations took place under extremely harsh conditions, often in cattle carriages, with hundreds of thousands of deportees dying [179] en route. Some experts estimate that the number of deaths from the deportations could be as high [180][181] as one in three in certain cases. Regarding the fate of the Crimean Tatars, Amir Weiner of Stanford University writes that the policy could be classified as "ethnic cleansing". In the book Century of Genocide, Lyman H Legters writes "We cannot properly speak of a completed genocide, only of a [182] process that was genocidal in its potentiality."

Tibet
According to The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese Communists carried out a cultural genocide against the Tibetans. Jean-Louis Margolin states that the killings were proportionally larger in Tibet than China proper, and that "one can legitimately speak of genocidal massacres because of the [183] numbers involved." According to the Dalai Lamaand the Central Tibetan Administration, "Tibetans were not only shot, but also were beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, [183] strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded." Adam Jones, a Canadian scholar specializing in genocide, notes that after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Chinese authorized struggle sessions against reactionaries, during which "...communist cadres denounced, tortured, and frequently executed enemies of the people." These sessions resulted in

92,000 deaths out of a population of about 6 million. These deaths, Jones stresses, may be seen not only as a genocide but also as 'eliticide' "targeting the better educated and leadership oriented [184] elements among the Tibetan population."

Inclusion of famine as killing

The journalist and author Seamus Milne has questioned whether deaths from famine should be considered equivalent to state killings, since the demographic data used to estimate famine deaths may not be reliable. He argues that, if they are to be, then Britain would have to be considered responsible for as many as 30 million deaths in India from famine during the 19th century, and he [185] laments that there has been "no such comprehensive indictment of the colonial record". Benjamin Valentino writes that, "Although not all the deaths due to famine in these cases were intentional, communist leaders directed the worst effects of famine against their suspected enemies [186] and used hunger as a weapon to force millions of people to conform to the directives of the state." Daniel Goldhagen argues that in some cases, deaths from famine should not be distinguished from mass murder: "Whenever governments have not alleviated famine conditions, political leaders decided not to say no to mass death in other words, they said yes." He claims that famine was either used or deliberately tolerated by the Soviets, the Germans, the communist Chinese, the British in Kenya, the Hausa against the Ibo in Nigeria, Khmer Rouge, communist North Koreans, Ethiopeans in Eritrea, Zimbabwe against regions of political opposition, and Political Islamists in [187] southern Sudan and Darfur.

Notable executioners
Major-General Vasili Blokhin, Stalin's chief executioner at Lubyanka prison, personally shot thousands [188][189] of prisoners and is regarded by some historians as the most prolific executioner in history.

Legal prosecution for genocide and genocide denial

Katyn 1943 exhumation. Photo byInternational Red Cross delegation.

Ethiopia's former ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam has been convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by an Ethiopian court for his role in the Red Terror, and the highest ranking surviving member of the Khmer Rouge has been charged with those [133][190][191][192][193] crimes. However, no communist country or governing body has ever been convicted of genocide. Ethiopian law is distinct from the UN and other definitions in that it defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. In this respect it closely resembles the distinction [194] of politicide. According to the laws of the Czech Republic, the person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or Communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or Communists will be punished [195] by prison of 6 months to 3 years. In March 2005, the Polish Sejm unanimously requested Russia to classify the Katyn massacre, the execution of over 21,000 Polish POW's and intellectual leaders by [196] Stalin's NKVD, as a crime of genocide. Alexander Savenkov of the Prosecutor's General Office of the Russian Federation responded: "The version of genocide was examined, and it is my firm [197] conviction that there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms." In March 2010, Memorial called upon Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to denounce the massacre as a

crime against humanity. On November 26, 2010, the Russian State Duma issued a declaration that archival material not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the [199] Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders." In August 2007, Arnold Meri, an Estonian Red Army veteran and cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of genocide by Estonian authorities for participating in [200][201] the deportations of Estonians in Hiiumaa in 1949. The trial was halted when Meri died March 27, 2009, at the age of 89. Meri denied the accusation, characterizing them as politically motivated [202] defamation: "I do not consider myself guilty of genocide," he said. On July 26, 2010, Kang Kek Iew (aka Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp in Democratic Kampuchea where more than 14,000 people were tortured and then murdered (mostly at nearby Choeung Ek), was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years. His [203] sentence was reduced to 19 years in part because he had been behind bars for 11 years.

[198]

History of Communism
Communism's Crimes Against Humanity
In October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to the deadliest ideology in human history - Communism. In less than 100 years, Communism has claimed more than 100 million lives. Today, it continues to enslave one-fifth of the world's people. Thanks to the efforts of The Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation and its supporters the United States, Communism's greatest challenger and a symbol of freedom to the world, now has a memorial to commemorate these victims. Dedicated on June 12, 2007 by President George W. Bush, The Victims of Communism Memorial stands two blocks from the U.S. Capitol building. It stands as an enduring reminder of the murderous legacy of totalitarianism.

Never Forget
A free people cannot afford to forget the evils of Communism. We cannot allow the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro to fade into the background of history. We must not forget the trail of blood and tears this utopian deception has left behind: When the Bolsheviks murdered their way into power... When Lenin destroyed hundreds of thousands of Cossacks... When the Kremlin starved more than six million in Ukraine... When Mao murdered tens of millions of Chinese peasants during his "Great Leap Forward"... When Ho Chi Minh sent 850,000 Vietnamese to their graves in "education camps"... When Castro buried dissenters in the infamous Isle of Pines... When the student voices of freedom were silenced at Tiananmen Square...

A Moral Blind Spot

It is a great moral failing that so many do not know the extent of Communism's atrocities. While the horrors of Nazism are well known, who knows that the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people? Who knows that China's dictators have slaughtered as many as 60 million? Who knows that the Communist holocaust has exacted a death toll surpassing that of all of the wars of the 20th century combined?

Just as we must grasp Communism's brutality, we must understand the true cause of the fall of the Soviet Union. The West's triumph over the "evil empire" was no accident of history. It was the result of a calculated strategy by a grand alliance of political, military, religious, business and labor leaders. These leaders deserve credit for the victory over Communism many thought impossible.

The Battle Continues

The specter of Communism still haunts the world. In Russia, one-third of the people believe that Stalin "did more good than bad for the country". In China, thousands of dissidents are imprisoned in the slave labor camps known as the laogai. In North Korea, masses starve as the leadership builds nuclear weapons. In Cuba, dissidents are routinely imprisoned for peacefully petitioning for democratic reform. Communism remains today, as it has since its bloody beginning in 1917, the road to serfdom.