Vladimir Lenin died 100 years ago today and Communist Cuba's hand picked president is celebrating his legacy

 #Lenin100

 

Today, 100 years ago, Vladimir Lenin died. His bloody revolutionary career claimed millions of lives through politically orchestrated famines or outright murders, and he sentenced the peoples of the Soviet Union to seven decades of despotism. 

Communist Cuba's president pays homage to Lenin.

Raul Castro's handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, today over Twitter observed the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin and honored the late mass murderer, and despot. Below is the text translated to English, and a screen grab of what the Cuban president posted.

"#Lenin100 is trending on this platform today, a century after the physical disappearance of the leader of the October Socialist Revolution and the world proletariat. #Cuba honors his memory."

Responded to his X post pointing out that it was the dictatorship in Cuba honoring Lenin's memory, not the Cuban people, and added that "Lenin was truly one of the bloodiest mass murderers in history as well as a dictator and psychopath. You should be ashamed honoring this monster."

 

Soviet leader: Lenin worse than Stalin

Who was this man, whom the Castro regime honored today on the 100th anniversary of his death?

The Russian communist revolutionary had several hundred aliases, but Lenin was the one he was best known for, and that he used politically. All the Bolshevik leaders used aliases.  

Molotov, a contemporary who held a leadership position in the Soviet Union, was quoted in David Remnick's 2014 book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. 

"'You know its a pity that Lenin died so early. If he had lived longer, everything would have been normal.' But Molotov said, 'Why do you say that?' My friend said, 'Because Stalin was a bloodsucker and Lenin was a noble person.' Molotov smiled, and then he said, ' Compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb."

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin and took the revolutionary name Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was one of the few Bolsheviks in Moscow, and he was part of the group that successfully carried out a coup against the social democrats in October 2017, and he was in the leadership group with both Lenin and Stalin throughout. He held leadership positions in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1961, when he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Molotov could assess both Lenin and Stalin's ruthlessness. 

The Library of Congress has communications between Lenin and Molotov. For example in a letter dated March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, he outlined "a brutal plan of action against the 'Black Hundreds' clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not depose the Czar.  They overthrew the social democrats who had forced the Czar to abdicate and placed him under house arrest, and were navigating power through democratic processes that were unprepared for the terror and conspiracies of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's body count

From November 1917 until his death in January 1924, the publication Counting Stars provided a summary of the victims of Leninism which is reproduced below.

The figures of victims of Leninism, from November 1917 to January 1924

• More than a million people murdered for political or religious reasons.
• Between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks killed.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants killed for striking.
• 240,000 killed in the suppression of the Tambov rebellion.
• More than 50,000 white prisoners of war executed.
• Between 3.9 million and 7.75 million deaths from famines among Russians, Kazakhs and Tatars." 
  

 A communist coup d'etat that aborted democracy in Russia

Lenin at a rally on March 18, 1918.

To demystify Lenin one must first break other myths. The most basic is that when the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out on November 7, 1917, the communists did not overthrow the Tsar - which no longer reigned - but aborted the incipient democracy in Russia, taking advantage of the crisis that arose between conservatives and socialists. After the violent assault on power by the communists, a civil war broke out that lasted five years, and in which - already in power - the Bolsheviks - who were victorious - faced all their rivals. It was the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would last more than 70 years, until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991."

Ideas have consequences 

The body count amassed by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks was not an accident, but the result of the ideas that animated them, and continue to animate the Cuban communists today.

On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: 

 "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." 

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." 

The Third International was founded by Lenin in 1915 and held its first of seven world congresses on March 2, 1919 and was also known as the Communist International, and was known by its abbreviated form the Comintern. It was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".  

The Soviet State was never abolished, but a new class created, "the nomenklatura" that spent decades ruling over the proletariat with a ruthlessness that led workers in communist regimes, to prefer a return to market systems and democracy. It is a historical irony that Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was brought to an end by the rise of an independent trade union movement in Poland. 

Castroism's Leninist continuity 

The Castro regime took a country with one of the largest middle classes in Latin America, in part due to a strong labor movement that had existed and grown more powerful for over 50 years. The Batista dictatorship was unable to crush it, but Castro's communist dictatorship over a couple of years crushed this workers movement, and 64 years later the nomenklatura lives with great wealth and privileges while the rest of the Cuban populace is immiserated. 

Fidel Castro, and the rest of the Cuban communists embraced Lenin's "communist morality" and "the big lie." Consider the late dictator's own words on the subject.

Fidel Castro on December 2, 1961 in a moment of frankness confessed: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  He was able to "confess" that he had always been a communist because he had consolidated power and killed or imprisoned all his enemies, and shut down all independent media. He had imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Cubans.

Years later on March 26, 1964, Fidel Castro explained: "I conceive the truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth, as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist."  

Mr. Castro's philosophy is not original, but Leninism with tropical flair, and the speaking style of Benito Mussolini.

Cuban scholar and Christian Democrat Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from primary school and onward, concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

Terrorism and Communism

Author and Journalist Claire Sterling in her March 1, 1981 article in The New York Times,  TERRORISM  TRACING THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK touched on terrorism's links to international communism beginning with Lenin, but moved on to the pivotal role played by the Castro regime in Cuba.

"Lenin's definition -- 'the purpose of terror is to terrorize' -- is a useful beginning. The terrorist uses violence not to punish the victim but to intimidate the audience, to impose his political will by force when he cannot achieve it by democratic means".

The Castro regime fully embraced terrorism as a global strategy and built an international terrorist network.

..."Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks." ..."The roots of the terrorist network can be traced directly to the Tricontinental Congress held in Havana in January 1966. More than 500 delegates passed resolutions emphasizing the need for close collaboration between 'Socialist countries' --i.e., the Soviet Union and its satellites -- and national liberation movements." ...  "It was, unmistakably, a call for a Guerrilla International. And the call was heeded. Ten months later, a new cluster of more than a dozen training camps for guerilla fighters from all over the world was opened in Cuba." 

Bombing campaigns were carried out in the United States, and innocents were murdered.  Some of these terrorists were captured, placed on trial, but then broke out of prison and ended up being harbored by the Castro regime. They continue to advocate terrorism, and justify their violence. Worse yet, communist networks claim these killers are "political prisoners."

Lenin died 100 years ago today. The tragedy is that he was able to cause so much harm in his 53 years of life. He is the intellectual author of the Soviet Union,  a system correctly described as anti-human by British conservative Peter Hitchens.

Diaz- Canel is part of a regime that is a continuity of the system created by Lenin.

The Cuban communist channeled Lenin on July 11, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets nonviolently across Cuba demanding freedom: 

"The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries! ...They will have to walk right over our corpses. We are ready to do anything if they want to confront the revolution."

Díaz-Canel's call to violence had deadly consequences for Cubans. Regime agents went out into residential neighborhoods firing on protesters. Cuban protester Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back and killed on July 12, 2021 by police.

The Cuban president's honoring of Lenin, a mass murdering psychopath, conforms to the actions he has taken since being handpicked for the post by Raul Castro in 2018. Dr. Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time,” and Cuba watchers should believe Diaz-Canel is a Leninist.

Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today and the Castro regime celebrated his legacy

Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today, bringing to an end a blood filled revolutionary career that killed millions in outright murders or politically engineered famines, and condemned the Soviet peoples to seven decades of tyranny.

Castro regime pays homage to Lenin.

Raul Castro's handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, today over Twitter observed the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin. 

Two days after a high-level delegation of American officials visited Havana to meet with the Castro regime's state security officials, the Cuban president praised Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

"Vladimir Ilyich #Lenin, eternal leader of those who fight for socialism and social justice, died this day in 1924, at only 53 years of age. His social and political work has not ceased to inspire millions of people around the world. #Cuba pays tribute."

The Russian communist revolutionary had several hundred aliases, but Lenin was the one he was best known for, and that he used politically. All the Bolshevik leaders used aliases.  

Soviet leader: Lenin worse than Stalin

Who was this man, whom the Castro regime remembered today on the 99th anniversary of his death?
Molotov, a contemporary who held a leadership position in the Soviet Union, was quoted in David Remnick's 2014 book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. 

"'You know its a pity that Lenin died so early. If he had lived longer, everything would have been normal.' But Molotov said, 'Why do you say that?' My friend said, 'Because Stalin was a bloodsucker and Lenin was a noble person.' Molotov smiled, and then he said, ' Compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb."

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin and took the revolutionary name Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was one of the few Bolsheviks in Moscow, and he was part of the group that successfully carried out a coup against the social democrats in October 2017, and he was in the leadership group with both Lenin and Stalin throughout. He held leadership positions in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1961, when he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Molotov could assess both Lenin and Stalin's ruthlessness. 

The Library of Congress has communications between Lenin and Molotov. For example in a letter dated March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, he outlined "a brutal plan of action against the 'Black Hundreds' clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not depose the Czar.  They overthrew the social democrats who had forced the Czar to abdicate and placed him under house arrest, and were navigating power through democratic processes that were unprepared for the terror and conspiracies of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's body count

From November 1917 until his death in January 1924, the publication Counting Stars provided a summary of the victims of Leninism.

"The figures of victims of Leninism, from November 1917 to January 1924

• More than a million people murdered for political or religious reasons.
• Between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks killed.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants killed for striking.
• 240,000 killed in the suppression of the Tambov rebellion.
• More than 50,000 white prisoners of war executed.
• Between 3.9 million and 7.75 million deaths from famines among Russians, Kazakhs and Tatars."
  

Lenin at a rally on March 18, 1918.

"A communist coup d'etat that aborted democracy in Russia

To demystify Lenin one must first break other myths. The most basic is that when the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out on November 7, 1917, the communists did not overthrow the Tsar - which no longer reigned - but aborted the incipient democracy in Russia, taking advantage of the crisis that arose between conservatives and socialists. After the violent assault on power by the communists, a civil war broke out that lasted five years, and in which - already in power - the Bolsheviks - who were victorious - faced all their rivals. It was the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would last more than 70 years, until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991."

Ideas have consequences 

The body count amassed by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks was not an accident, but the result of the ideas that animated them, and continue to animate the Cuban communists today.

On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: 

 "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." 

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." 

The Third International was founded by Lenin in 1915 and held its first of seven world congresses on March 2, 1919 and was also known as the Communist International, and was known by its abbreviated form the Comintern. It was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".  

The Soviet State was never abolished, but a new class created, "the nomenklatura" that spent decades ruling over the proletariat with a ruthlessness that led workers in communist regimes, to prefer a return to market systems and democracy. It is a historical irony that Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was brought to an end by the rise of an independent trade union movement in Poland. 

Castroism's Leninist continuity 

The Castro regime took a country with one of the largest middle classes in Latin America, in part due to a strong labor movement that had existed and grown more powerful for over 50 years. The Batista dictatorship was unable to crush it, but Castro's communist dictatorship over a couple of years crushed this workers movement, and 64 years later the nomenklatura lives with great wealth and privileges while the rest of the Cuban populace is immiserated. 

Fidel Castro, and the rest of the Cuban communists embraced Lenin's "communist morality" and "the big lie." Consider the late dictator's own words on the subject.

Fidel Castro on December 2, 1961 in a moment of frankness confessed: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  He was able to "confess" that he had always been a communist because he had consolidated power and killed or imprisoned all his enemies, and shut down all independent media. He had imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Cubans.

Years later on March 26, 1964, Fidel Castro explained: "I conceive the truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth, as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist."  

Mr. Castro's philosophy is not original, but Leninism with tropical flair, and the speaking style of Benito Mussolini.

Cuban scholar and Christian Democrat Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from primary school and onward, concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

Terrorism and Communism

Author and Journalist Claire Sterling in her March 1, 1981 article in The New York Times,  TERRORISM  TRACING THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK touched on terrorism's links to international communism beginning with Lenin, but moved on to the pivotal role played by the Castro regime in Cuba.

"Lenin's definition -- 'the purpose of terror is to terrorize' -- is a useful beginning. The terrorist uses violence not to punish the victim but to intimidate the audience, to impose his political will by force when he cannot achieve it by democratic means".

The Castro regime fully embraced terrorism as a global strategy and built an international terrorist network.

..."Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks." ..."The roots of the terrorist network can be traced directly to the Tricontinental Congress held in Havana in January 1966. More than 500 delegates passed resolutions emphasizing the need for close collaboration between 'Socialist countries' --i.e., the Soviet Union and its satellites -- and national liberation movements." ...  "It was, unmistakably, a call for a Guerrilla International. And the call was heeded. Ten months later, a new cluster of more than a dozen training camps for guerilla fighters from all over the world was opened in Cuba." 

Bombing campaigns were carried out in the United States, and innocents were murdered.  Some of these terrorists were captured, placed on trial, but then broke out of prison and ended up being harbored by the Castro regime. They continue to advocate terrorism, and justify their violence. Worse yet, communist networks claim these killers are "political prisoners."

Lenin died 99 years ago today. The tragedy is that he was able to cause so much harm in his 53 years of life. He is the intellectual author of the Soviet Union,  a system correctly described as anti-human by British conservative Peter Hitchens.

Diaz- Canel is part of a regime that is a continuity of the system created by Lenin.

The Cuban communist channeled Lenin on July 11, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets nonviolently across Cuba demanding freedom: 

"The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries! ...They will have to walk right over our corpses. We are ready to do anything if they want to confront the revolution."

Díaz-Canel's call to violence had deadly consequences for Cubans. Regime agents went out into residential neighborhoods firing on protesters. Cuban protester Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back and killed on July 12, 2021 by police.

Black Ribbon Day 2020: The Hitler-Stalin Pact that started WW2 and that communists would like to erase.

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera

Eighty one years ago on August 23, 1939 the world was shocked to learn that Communist Russia and Nazi Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Observers would have been even more horrified had they known of the secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian powers. What they called a "peace treaty" in reality was a war treaty.

Rolling Soviet tanks and Nazi motorcyclists in Poland (September 1939).

 Nine days later on September 1, 1939 at 4:45 am Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union exercising its secret agreement with the Nazis invaded Poland from the East and met their German allies in the middle of Poland. On September 22, 1939 the German Nazi army joined with the Soviet Communist army in a military parade in Brest-Litovsk and the two sides celebrated together.

Nazi and Soviet soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)

About 230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Russians. The Soviet precursor to the KGB was the NKVD. "From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."

The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.  

Thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders were taken into the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, shot in the back of the head or in the neck and buried in mass graves.
Months later, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the Baltic States in June 1940. 

This should not have come as a complete surprise.
 
The same people who would join Hitler's brown shirts were also susceptible recruits to join Antifa. Communists viewed the SA as a "proletarian-revolutionary paramilitary wing"of the Nazi movement and susceptible to being recruited to the communist cause. The case of Richard Scheringer, a supporter of Adolf Hitler and army officer who converted to communism in the early 1930s is a high profile example of this.
 
Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emeritus, at Emory University, described how communists had mistakenly viewed the Nazis as a means to achieving power and undermining capitalist democracies. Antifa identified all political parties that were not communist as fascist. This meant that social democrats, centrist political parties, and conservative parties were together with the Nazis all labeled fascist. Fascism, according to Antifa, is anti-capitalism. This was the Comintern's class against class approach and fractured any potential broad anti-Nazi coalition.

"Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1932 had been immeasurably aided by the German communists' steadfast support for the Comintern tactic of “class against class,” which demanded no cooperation with other anti-Nazi forces. German communists blithely insisted that Hitler’s triumph would be evanescent—summarized in their optimistic slogan, Nach Hitler, kommen wir ('After Hitler, us'). 

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is this strategy but on a grander scale. Let the Western democracies and the Nazis exhaust each other in the conflict and then seize everything. Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. reported that "Stalin shipped huge supplies of food and fuel for the German war effort against the West."

Soviet and Nazi soldiers fraternize after conquering Poland in 1939

The Communist International (Comintern) issued new orders to their members once the non-aggression pact had been made public.  Professor Klehr described the new directive.

Good communists were ordered to oppose anyone intending to stand in Hitler’s way.  With Ribbentrop’s second visit to Moscow at the end of September and the signing of a German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, the Comintern emphasized that the primary adversary was those countries that were at war with Germany, and those socialists and social democrats fighting against fascism. Germany had concluded a pact with the USSR, while “reactionary” England, at the helm of a vast colonial empire, was the “bulwark of capitalism.” Thus, communist parties in England and France were ordered to call for the defeat of their countries—ordered, in other words, to officially embrace treason. 

According to Klehr, Nazi reports confirmed that Communists were fulfilling their part of the agreement siding against Western Democracies. 

A June 1940 Gestapo report approvingly noted that the Soviet government was favorably disposed to the Third Reich and had endorsed its invasions of the Scandinavian states and Belgium and Holland “as necessary and proper.” The report went on to note that the Comintern had avoided open attacks on Germany,  and that the parties and publications allied with the Comintern were not pushing for communists to struggle against National Socialism or denounce fascism.

This arrangement only ended on June 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, and Soviet foreign minister, Molotov

Communist morality has no problem with any of it because as the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin observed in a speech to Russian communist youth on October 2, 1920:

"The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society."

The myth that the communists were anti-fascists is a dangerous one, and the fact is that they viewed the Nazis as an instrument to wipe out Western Democracies and replace them with communist regimes believing that the fascists would quickly fade out of power.

This reckless strategy cost 22 to 28 million Russian lives in World War Two, and nearly led to the Nazi conquest and occupation of Russia.

It also led to Poland spending another half century under Soviet domination and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia occupied by the Russians.  A conquest that arose out of the Hitler-Stalin pact that endured following the end of the war. 

The Baltic Way brought an end to one key element of Molotov Ribbentrop

It was a nonviolent movement thirty years ago that liberated the Baltic nations. The Baltic Way brought an end to this part of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact.

On June 4, 1989 the Solidarity labor movement won in free elections and the Polish people finally regained their sovereignty after nearly 50 years under Soviet domination. They did it nonviolently.

So did the people of the Baltic states when two million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands together in a giant human chain stretching 370 miles on August 23, 1989. Fifty years to the day after the treaty that brought them so much grief had been signed.

This history must not be forgotten. The Spanish scholar George Santayana understood that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The Embassy of Estonia, Embassy of Latvia, Embassy of Lithuania, JBANC, Estonian American National Council, EU Delegation to the USA, Lithuanian American Council, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation organized a reenactment of this nonviolent action that freed three peoples on the 80th anniversary of the signing of the pact.

In Washington DC on August 23, 2019, we held hands in a human chain to celebrate freedom in front of the U.S. Capitol and afterwards gathered at Biergarten Haus. 

At a time when communists are using the Antifa label to legitimize their deadly ideology it is important to remember their alliance with Nazism, and call on others to learn from this history.
 

Eighty Years Ago: Stalin Sent German Jewish Refugees to Hitler in 1940

Eighty years ago on August 23, 1939 Communist Russia and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The treaty had secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe between the two regimes. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Soviet and Nazi soldiers fraternize after conquering Poland in 1939

What they called a "peace treaty" in reality was a military alliance. On September 22, 1939 the German Nazi army joined with the Soviet Communist army in a military parade in Brest-Litovsk and the two sides celebrated their victory together.

EUvsDisinfo, February 25, 2020

80 years ago: Stalin sending German Jews to Hitler

Historical revisionism is an important strand of disinformation. The EUvsDisinfo database contains a large number of cases of this kind, most of which pertain to rewriting the history of World War II. Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets are attempting to diminish the meaning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, concluded between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in late August 1939. The pact with Stalin made it possible for Germany to unleash a military attack on Poland just one week after the signing of the treaty. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a credit agreement between Germany and Soviet Russia, cooperation on trade, military technology and cultural exchange – and a secret protocol on the delineation of “spheres of interests” between the two totalitarian powers.

 

One example of the cooperation between Soviet Russia and Nazi German was demonstrated in February 1940, when the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre broadcast German composer Richard Wagner’s opera “The Valkyrie” for a German audience. Soviet theaters had been reluctant to stage Wagner, since the Nazis exploited his works in their propaganda. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact changed all that. “The Valkyrie” was staged and introduced to radio listeners by the world famous Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.

Another manifestation of Soviet-German cooperation was Russia’s deportation of hundreds of refugees to German authorities. Most of them were German anti-fascists, communists, and Jews who were seeking asylum in the Soviet Union. Now they were handed over to the Gestapo. One of the deportees was Betty Olberg; the wife of a German Jewish communist who had been killed by Stalin in 1936. Olberg was sent from the ALZHIR camp in Soviet Kazakhstan to Germany in February 1940. With her traveled Margarete Buber-Neumann who wrote a book about her experiences in Stalin’s and Hitler’s concentration camps after the war. All traces of Betty Olberg have been lost since her arrival in German-controlled territory.

The transfer of refugees from the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany commenced about a month after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The last refugees were sent to Germany only a few weeks before the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

Betty Olberg’s mug shot from Soviet secret police

Remembering the lessons of 1939 and 1989: Resistance not appeasement to totalitarian thugs

Today we too find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic conflict between the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".  - Saint John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995

Statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky taken down in Warsaw

Europe offers a cautionary example to the world of what happens when the good appease tyrants rather than oppose them.  In the 1930s Western Democrats sought to appease Hitler's Third Reich to avoid war and ended up with the destruction of Europe in World War II. Fifty years later, Western Democrats following decades vigilance and resistance, the communist regimes of the Soviet empire peacefully imploded.
  
Despite this moment of celebration, Pope John Paul II raised the warning in 1995 that there was a dramatic conflict between the cultures of life and death. This warning had also applied in 1939, and caught many by surprise when two ideologies that at first glance appeared to be opponents became allies.

On August 23, 1939 the Hitler-Stalin Pact (formal name the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) was signed that publicly proclaimed a non-aggression treaty, but had secret protocols that divided up Central Europe and partitioned Poland. This so-called "non-aggression pact" had sparked Word War 2 on September 1, 1939. On September 22, 1939 a joint Nazi–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk was held to celebrate the successful invasion and conquest of Poland. This war ended six years and one day later on September 2, 1945.  An estimated 15 million soldiers died on the battlefield, and 45 million civilians were killed in the conflict. In a speech delivered on August 1, 1940 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov,  celebrated this alliance.

"A radical change for the better in the relations between the Soviet Union and Germany found its expression in the non-aggression pact signed last August. These new, good relations between the USSR and Germany have been tested in practice in connection with events in former Poland, and their strength has been sufficiently proved."

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany continued to collaborate and assist each other in a bilateral pact through the summer of 1941.  In October - November 1940 they held talks and negotiated terms and spheres of influence to have the Soviet Union join the Axis powers in a four power pact. This would have meant that Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union would all work together to overthrow Western Democracies and divide up the world.  However, their inability to reach on accommodation on the division of Europe led to a deterioration of relations in 1941, and Hitler's invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 ended their alliance. 

Talks on dividing up the world between Nazi and Soviet spheres held in 1940

This was not the first time Nazis and Communists would collaborate nor would it be the last.  This history calls for a deeper reflection on the two ideologies and their commonalities, which are found in the "culture of death" they both embraced.

World War II escalated the culture of death to levels not seen before in human history and culminated in the creation of atomic bombs that threaten continued human existence, and the depravity of the Holocaust. It also ended with the Soviet Union occupying half of Europe and imposing communist regimes on captive nations.

Thankfully the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe from communist control was finally achieved relatively non-violently between 1989 and 1991. Democrats were nonviolent while communists killed opposition members and created martyrs.

Over the next few weeks many in the world will be celebrating this triumph of the culture of life over the culture of death that took place between 1989 and culminated on Christmas day in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

 What was achieved 30 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships.  In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the collapse of the communist regime:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

In Poland on the same day, people applauded in Warsaw as a 49 foot statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka, the first Soviet's secret police that would eventually be replaced by the KGB, was taken down. It had been in downtown Warsaw since 1945. Poland had elected its first non-communist government since WW2 in September of 1989.

Despite the claims of Francis Fukuyama that history had ended and democracy had won the reality is that resistance to these evil ideologies and other variants that arise must continue. The German city of Dresden declared a "Nazi emergency" on November 1, 2019 citing a resurgence of the toxic ideology. 

Communism did not disappear with the Soviet Union. In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Brazilian leader Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) was established with the goal “to reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.” The FSP is a communist network comprised of over 100 left wing political parties, various social movements, and guerrilla terrorist organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

Both Communist and Nazi networks continue to operate worldwide, but the communists can still rely on state actors such as Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Mainland China for additional support to the existing networks.  During the Cold War, the Soviets provided support to the Neo-Nazis in West Germany in an effort to disrupt the democracy there.

What began as a strike on rising prices at the metro turned violent

Communists in Chile channeled discontent over a fare increase in the Metro there into a coordinated series of violent protests that destroyed in short order 80 of the 136 metro stations had been damaged with eleven completely destroyed. This began with a protest of the fare increase that led to jumping the turnstiles and escalated to coordinated acts of destruction and violence that has caused over 300 million dollars in damage and over twenty dead in riots and looting.

80 of 136 metro stations have been damaged in Chile with a cost of $300 million

We are now witnessing an attempt in New York City to repeat this "revolutionary" moment. Teen Vogue has published an article favoring the violence in Chile as a challenge to inequality while ignoring that poverty has been steadily declining in the South American nation over the past thirty years, and inequality has also been declining over the past ten. The objective is to destroy a successful economic model that has lifted many out of poverty and with proper reforms could achieve even more.

The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States on October 15, 2019 sounded the warning:

The strategy of destabilization of democracy through the financing of political and social movements has distorted political dynamics in the Americas. For years, the Venezuelan dictatorship, with the support of the Cuban dictatorship, institutionalized sophisticated co-optation, repression, destabilization and media propaganda structures in the region. For example, the financing of the Venezuelan dictatorship to political campaigns has been one of the effective ways to increase capacities to generate conflict. The crisis in Ecuador is an expression of the distortions that the Venezuelan and Cuban dictatorships have installed in the political systems of the hemisphere. However, what recent events have also shown is that the intentional and systematic strategy of the two dictatorships to destabilize democracies is no longer as effective as in the past.

This warning should not just be heeded by Latin American policy makers but also by their counterparts in the United States.  The refrain, "that it cannot happen here," is one that I have heard over the years from Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, and Mexicans. It is a foolish sentiment. It can happen anywhere. Complacency and lack of vigilance are the greatest threats to liberty. British statesman Edmund Burke understood that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Metro cars destroyed in Chile

We witnessed in 1989 what can be achieved when the good associate to resist evil, and what happened in 1939 when the good sought to appease evil and the terrible price paid afterwards to contain and defeat it.

Now is the time to defend the culture of life that is found in the defense of human dignity and rights. While opposing those who seek to subjugate and destroy free nations and peoples.