The Dead End of Communism

On March 14, 2016, at the UN’s Palais des Nations in Geneva, I joined a forum to commemorate the second anniversary of the death in custody of human rights defender Cao Shunli. I couldn’t help but vent my anger at what a criminal gang the Chinese Communist Party is. The same day I received the […]

“The Teacher” combines critically examines of the Communist experience and its effect on the day to day—here on children and their parents.

In the United States and other democratic nations, narratives on racial inequality, social justice, and other issues dominate an increasingly divisive and polarizing political culture. As an article by the National Review reads: “Americans have grown increasingly accustomed to the view that your politics are determined by your racial, ethnic, or gender identity.” Prevailing leftist […]

The sudden and largely peaceful collapse of Soviet communism between 1989 and 1991 is lauded as one of the great political achievements in recent history. As then-head of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev stands prominent as the architect of the reforms that introduced capitalism to Eastern Europe and began the transition out of […]

The extremist anarchist-communist group Antifa has been in the headlines because of recent violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yet while the organization has been applauded by some left-leaning news outlets for including white nationalists and neo-Nazis in its list of targets, the organization wasn’t always about targeting “fascism,” as it claims. The organization was initially part of […]

Despite all our talk of progress, the 20th century was the most violent in all of human history, and the overwhelming majority of that violence—resulting in at least 100 million unnatural deaths—was caused by communism, a belief system that still clings to the minds of many in our society. Communism tries to seduce people with […]

In the summer of 1944, the Nazi occupation of Poland was nearing the end of its fifth year. More than one in five Poles had been killed, enslaved, or shipped off to concentration camps. The country was being incrementally destroyed to make way for Adolf Hitler’s vision of a greater German Reich. Still, hundreds of […]

Fan Changjiang, a journalist for the reputable Ta Kung Pao newspaper in republican China, was a loyal communist and proud of it. He once boasted that “in newspapers and books published legally under Nationalist rule, I was the first person to call [the Communists] the Red Army … and not bandits, and to announce that the […]

The horrors of the Soviet gulag system have been well-documented by steadfast survivors and discerning historians. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” (1973) recounted the prominent dissident’s experiences in the camps, while academic giants like Robert Conquest wrote works like “The Great Terror” (1968) at a time when many were ignorant or downplayed the scale and intensity of Soviet […]

In 1906, a 27-year-old Joseph Stalin went to church and married a beautiful woman named Kato Svanidze, whom he had met two years earlier. According to those familiar to the couple, their relationship was a happy one that brought out a soft and loving side in the future Soviet dictator. To Stalin’s further delight, a […]

Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and beliefs of our societies through its Marxist idea that knowledge and truth are social constructs. Under it, a new wave of skepticism and distrust was applied […]

TALLINN, Estonia—He was one of thousands of courageous youth who gathered back in 1987 at Raekoja Plats, the town square of Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, to sing forbidden patriotic songs, to unfurl the national blue-black-white flag, and to march to the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Sten Weidebaum was there to protest the nearly 50 years of communist occupation by the Soviets. “It […]

An emotionally overwhelming documentary, "Waiting for the Sun" is very highly recommended: June 15 & 16, at 2017 AFI Docs Film Festival.

The last acceptable words of praise for communist China’s founding dictator Mao Zedong, it seems, are of the sociological persuasion. “Women hold up half the sky,” the chairman famously said. To modern observers, these words—and the social policies that accompanied them—serve to convince that at least there was room for progressive thought under history’s bloodiest […]

WASHINGTON—The power of memory—to honor, to console, to teach, and to warn—was evoked on the morning of June 9 at the award and wreath-laying ceremonies at the Victims of Communism Memorial. The event began with the passionate violin playing of Wuilly Moisés Arteaga, a 23-year-old from the socialist state of Venezuela. Arteaga had been flown […]

The French Revolution from 1789 to 1799 had a large influence on Karl Marx, and on the origins of communism. We’ve written previously about Gracchus Babeuf, regarded as the first revolutionary communist, and his direct influence on Marx; and we’ve also written about Maximilien Robespierre, whose violent Reign of Terror had a strong influence on […]

Kaliningrad is the westernmost region of Russia, famous for its mild climate, beaches, and amber, of which it has 90 percent of the world’s supply. The history of this Russian exclave as such is relatively short: prior to Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, it was East Prussia, and as German as Hamburg or […]

Twenty-eight years ago, China—along with the Soviet bloc—seemed to be on the cusp of political change. Beginning with college students and university staff around the country, millions of people joined the nationwide demonstrations—for human rights, an end to corruption, and democratic reform—that had been sparked off by the death of Hu Yaobang, the liberal former […]

The Reign of Terror in the French Revolution laid the foundations from which communism grew. It pushed for an idea of “liberation” that gradually destroyed free will, and was based on a top-down system that sought to establish social good by regulating the beliefs and opinions of the individual. Communism sustains itself by violently suppressing […]

In August 1918, a woman shot and nearly killed Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as he toured a factory in Moscow. The assassin was Fanya Kaplan, a disgruntled socialist whose political party had been banned earlier that year by Lenin’s Bolshevik communists. Before her execution several days later, Kaplan said she acted alone. But there were […]