One would think that following the prevalence of the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the anti-communist campaign that was unfolded during the Cold War would end. Not only did this not happen but, on the contrary, the attempt to slander socialism-communism continued unabated and, in many cases, it was instrumentalized, mainly in the United States and the European Union through the establishment of institutions and foundations, having as a sole purpose the falsification of history. Within this context, by an unanimous decision of the U.S Congress in 1993, the notorious Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) was established, with a stated mission of “educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism”(1).
Among the founding members of VOC, one can find some interesting names, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the well-known and influential Political Scientist and Diplomat who, among others, served as a Counselor to U.S Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Another founder is Lev Dobriansky, Diplomat and Economics Professor at Georgetown University. While Brzezinski's case is more or less known, it is worth mentioning a few things about Dr Dobriansky. Son of Ukrainian immigrants who moved to the U.S in 1910s, the latter worked, among others, at the U.S Embassy in Santiago de Chile between 1975-76, just a couple of years after the bloody CIA-backed coup that overthrew the elected President Salvador Allende and installed General August Pinochet. In 1982, following a decision by President Reagan, Dobriansky was promoted by being appointed as U.S Ambassador to the Bahamas. Among others, he served the Chairman of the National Captive Nations Committee, an anti-communist organization founded in 1959 by the Eisenhower administration and which maintained close co-operative relations with Ukrainian fascists, followers of Nazi SS collaborator Stepan Bandera (4). Vice President of the above-mentioned Committee was Yaroslav Stetsko, a high-ranking members of fascist, neo Nazi groups, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Anti-Bolshevik Coalition of Nations.
Alongside Brzezinski and Dobriansky, a key role in the establishment of VOC belongs to Lee Edwards, a right wing academic who led the creation of an anti-Soviet organization called Young Americans for Freedom in 1960s. For decades, Edwards served as a distinguished scientfic associate of the far-right think tank Heritage Foundation which, among other things, openly endorsed the Iraq War and expressed support for the maintaining of the U.S detained center in Guantanamo Bay. Not coincidentally, the financiers of Heritage include large multinational monopoly groups, such as Mobil, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and Pfizer (5).
Another characteristic aspect of the VOC is the composition of its national and international advisory committee, where one can literally find the crème de la crème of anti-communism: From prominent figures of anti-communist historiography, like Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes to pioneers of counterrevolutionary insurgencies in Eastern Europe such as Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Emil Constantinescu and Sali Berisha, as well as Cuban counterrevolutionary Armando Valladares. Additionally, an examination of the Foundation's current leadership leaves no doubts concerning its strong links with the U.S governmental apparatus, with former and current Diplomats, University Professors, Members of conservative think tanks and high-ranking officials of Ministries and other U.S government agencies being active in the administration of VOC.
A few years ago, the links of VOC with far-right and openly fascist groups was enriched. More specifically, in summer 2021, the Foundation decided to erect a new monument “for the victims of communism” in Ottawa, thus receiving donations and funding from a number of Canada-based conservative organizations. One of them was the so-called General Committee of United Croats of Canada, which donated money in memory of fascist Ante Pavelic (6), founder and leader of the notorious terrorist paramilitary movement Ustaše. Having close personal ties to Hitler and Mussolini themselves, Pavelic ruled in Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state, from 1941 to May 1945. Among others, he was the moral instigator of the extermination of at least 330,000 Serbs, 32,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma people during the Second World War. Except from Pavelic, the funders of VOC intented to honor two other criminals, also members of Ustaše, Mile Budak and Ivan Oršanić, while the foundation's connections also include Hungarian fascist groups, such as the Knights of Vitez Order members of the which had developed pro-Nazi activity in the Second World War.
During the inauguration of the memorial “for the victims of communism” on 12 June 2007 in Washington DC, President George W. Bush underlined that communism was responsible for 100 million dead in the 20th century, claiming that the purpose of the monument is to remind the younger generations of “communist crimes”. This reference of Bush isn't accidental, as it consists the official position of VOC, propagandized for years in every possible way, through print and online media up to paid advertisements in giant screens at New York's bustling Times Square. But, what is the actual source of this theory and how accurate is it?
Even the most creative scriptwriter of Sci-Fi Hollywood films could hardly think of such an outrageous fallacy which can't stand up to any serious criticism. The root of this unscientific and unhistorical theory lies on “The Black Book of Communism” (7), a controversial and unreliable book released in 1997, edited by French historian Stéphane Courtois. The major conclusion of this particular work is that the victims of “communist regimes” during the 20th Century are estimated between 85,000,000 and 100,000,000 people! (8)
In order to arrive to the desired number of 100 million victims, Courtois and his colleagues blame “Communism” for almost every evil of this world, even for deaths deriving from all sorts of natural disasters, including famines and pandemics. On the other hand, there isn't the slightest scientific-based evidence for the claims expressed in the “Black Book of Communism”. The same applies for the allegations made by prominent anti-communists, like British historian, MI-6 employee Robert Conquest and far-right Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (9).
It is clear that the argument about the supposed millions of “victims of communism” aims at disorienting public discussion from the daily crimes of capitalism against humanity and poison the consciousness of younger generations about the necessity of class struggle. Consequently, the question that comes to mind is the following: How many generations of people have been died, killed or massacred due to capitalist exploitation, colonialism and imperialist wars since the French Revolution?
Notes:
(1). Jonathan Rauch. The Forgotten Millions. The Atlantic, December 2003.
(2). "Bill Summary and Status". Library of Congress. December 17, 1993.
(3). The aim of the online “Global Museum on Communism” was to “honor the more than 100 million victims of communist tyranny and educate future generations about past and present communist atrocities”. For unknown reasons, the website went offline in 2022.
(4). Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukrainian Secret, «Foreign Policy in Focus», fpif.org, 18 March 2014.
(5). Kotz, D (2015). The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism. Harvard University Press, p. 74
(6). Victims of communism memorial received donations honouring fascists, Nazi collaborators, CBC News, 23 July 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/victims#communism-memorial-fascists-1.611280
(7). Courtois, St (ed), (1999), The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press.
(8). The authors charge 60 million deaths to the PR of China, 20 million to the Soviet Union and 2 million deaths to Cambodia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
(9). See more: Nikos Mottas. Solzhenitsyn – The Rotten Legacy of a Fascist, In Defense of Communism, 3 August 2016: http://www.idcommunism.com/2016/08/solzhenitsyn-rotten-legacy-of-fascist.html and Nikos Mottas. “Gulag Archipelago”: Exposing the anticommunist fabrications of Solzhenitsyn. In Defense of Communism, 1 January 2018: https://t.ly/1Ya4w
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
Source: Nikos Mottas: The Spectre of Communism: Aspects of Anti -Communist Propaganda in Post-Cold War Era. (2024). World Marxist Review , 3(3), 41-52. https://doi.org/10.62834/v7zez250