Anti-communism
Encyclopedia
Anti-communism is opposition to communism
. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution
in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War
in 1947.
, which is a central idea in Marxism
. Anti-communists reject the Marxist belief that capitalism will be followed by socialism and communism, just as feudalism
was followed by capitalism. Anti-communists question the validity of the Marxist claim that the socialist state will "wither away" when it becomes unnecessary in a true communist society.
Anti-communists argue that the repression in the early years of the Bolshevik
regime, while not as extreme as that during Stalin's reign, was still severe by reasonable standards, citing examples such as Felix Dzerzhinsky's secret police, which eliminated numerous political opponents by extrajudicial executions, and the brutal crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion
and Tambov rebellion
. Some anti-communists refer to both Communism and fascism
as totalitarianism
, seeing similarity between the actions of communist and fascist governments. Robert Conquest
, a former Stalinist
and British Intelligence officer
, argued that Communism was responsible for tens of millions of deaths during the 20th century.
Opponents argue that Communist parties that have come to power have tended to be rigidly intolerant of political opposition. These opponents claim that most Communist countries have shown no signs of advancing from Marx's socialist stage of economy to an ideal communist stage. Rather, Communist governments have been accused of creating a new ruling class
(called the Nomenklatura
by Russians), with powers and privileges greater than those previously enjoyed by the upper classes in the pre-revolutionary regimes.
to form the Communist Third International, democratic socialists and social democrats have been in conflict with Communism, criticising it for its anti-democratic nature. Examples of left-wing critics of Communist states and parties are George Orwell
, Boris Souveraine, Bayard Rustin
, Irving Howe
and Max Shachtman
.
(spelled with a lower case c), all anarchists criticize authoritarian Communist parties and states. They argue that Marxist concepts such as dictatorship of the proletariat
and state ownership of the means of production
are anathema to anarchism. Some anarchists criticize communism from an individualist
or anarcho-capitalist point of view.
The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
debated with Karl Marx
in the First International, arguing that the Marxist state is another form of oppression. He loathed the idea of a vanguard party
ruling the masses from above. Anarchists initially participated in, and rejoiced over, the 1917 revolution
as an example of workers taking power for themselves. However, after the October revolution
, it became evident that the Bolsheviks and the anarchists had very different ideas. Anarchist Emma Goldman
, deported from the United States to Russia in 1919, was initially enthusiastic about the revolution, but was left sorely disappointed, and began to write her book My Disillusionment in Russia
. Anarchist Peter Kropotkin
, proffered trenchant criticism of the emergent Bolshevik bureaucracy in letters to Vladimir Lenin
, noting in 1920: "[a party dictatorship] is positively harmful for the building of a new socialist system. What is needed is local construction by local forces ... Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name." Many anarchists fought against Russian, Spanish and Greek Communists; many were killed by them, such as Lev Chernyi
, Camillo Berneri
and Constantinos Speras
. As well a lot of anarchists were massacred in concentration camps by Communists.
. Furthermore many capitalist theorists believe that communism interferes with the price mechanism that is only optimized in private competition. See economic calculation debate.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx lays out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution of land and production, and Ludwig von Mises
argues that the initial and ongoing forms of redistribution constitute direct coercion. Neither Marx's 10-point plan nor the rest of the manifesto say anything about who has the right to carry out the plan. Milton Friedman
argued that the absence of voluntary economic activity makes it too easy for repressive political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers. Friedman's view was also shared by Friedrich Hayek
and John Maynard Keynes
, both of whom believed that capitalism is vital for freedom to survive and thrive.
Many capitalist critics see a key error in communist economic theory, which predicts that in capitalist societies, the bourgeoisie will accumulate ever-increasing capital and wealth, while the lower classes become more dependent on the ruling class for survival, selling their labor power
for the most minimal of salaries, blaming the effect on capitalism. Anti-communists point to the overall rise in the average standard of living
in the non-communist West and claim that both the rich and poor have steadily gotten richer. Anti-communists argue that former Third World
countries that have successfully escaped poverty in recent decades have done so using capitalism, most notably India
and China
. Anti-communists cite the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia
as an example how a Communist regime in the Third World failed to achieve development or economic growth.
argue that wealth (or any other human value) is the creation of individual minds, that human nature requires motivation by personal incentive, and therefore, that only political and economic freedom are consistent with human prosperity. This is demonstrated, they believe, by the comparative prosperity of free market
and socialist
economies. Objectivist Ayn Rand
writes that communist leaders typically claim to work for the common good, but many or all of them have been corrupt and totalitarian.
Edward O. Wilson said "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species," meaning that while ant
s and other social insects appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to because they lack reproductive independence. Worker ants are sterile, and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, so ants are forced to live in centralised societies. Humans possess reproductive independence, so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen". According to Wilson, humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their families, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.
turned from a Communist into a social democrat. Milovan Đilas, was a former Yugoslav
Communist official, who became a prominent dissident
and critic of Communism. Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish Communist who became a famous anti-communist. He was best known for his critical analyses of Marxist
thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism, which is "considered by some to be one of the most important books on political theory of the 20th century." The God That Failed
is a 1949 book which collects together six essay
s with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists
, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of Communism. The promotional byline
to the book is "Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about Communism." Another notable anti-communist was Whittaker Chambers
, a former Soviet Union
spy who testified against his fellow spies before the House Un-American Activities Committee
.
Other anti-communists who were once Marxists include the writers Max Eastman
, John Dos Passos
, James Burnham
, Morrie Ryskind
, Frank Meyer
, Will Herberg
, Sidney Hook
, Louis Fischer
, André Gide
, Arthur Koestler
, Ignazio Silone
, Stephen Spender
, Peter Hitchens
and Richard Wright
. Anti-communists who were once socialists
, modern liberals or social democrats
include: John Chamberlain
, Friedrich Hayek
, Raymond Moley
, Norman Podhoretz
and Irving Kristol
.
, took power with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist unrest led many conservatives
to fear that a communist revolution was inevitable. Historians Ian Kershaw
and Joachim Fest
argue that in post-World War I
Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascistic political parties contending for the leadership of Germany’s anti-communist
movement, and of the German state. The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property
, its support of class conflict
, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility to small businessmen, and its atheism
. Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism
, favouring instead a stratified
economy with classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property
, and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.
In Europe, numerous aristocrats
, conservative intellectuals, capitalists and industrialists lent their support to fascist movements. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, several other anti-communist regimes and groups supported Nazism: the Falange
in Spain
; the Vichy regime
and the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism
(Wehrmacht
Infantry Regiment 638) in France; the Cliveden set
, Lord Halifax, and associates of Neville Chamberlain
in Britain.; and, in South America, movements such as Brazilian Integralism
.
Anti-communism remained a theme in far right politics after the war. For example, in the US, Frank L. Britton, editor of The American Nationalist published a book, Behind Communism, in 1952 which disseminated the myth that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy originating in Palestine
.
ese Buddhist monk
and anti-communist dissident. In 1977, Huyền Quang wrote a letter to Prime Minister
Phạm Văn Đồng detailing counts of oppression by the Communist regime. For this, he and five other senior monks were arrested and detained. In 1982, Huyền Quang was arrested and subsequently put into permanent house arrest for opposition to government policy after publicly denouncing the establishment of the state-controlled Vietnam Buddhist Church. Thích Quảng Độ is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and anti-communist dissident. In January 2008, the Europe-based magazine A Different View
chose Ven. Thích Quảng Độ as one of the 15 Champions of World Democracy.
states: "The Catholic Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic
ideologies associated in modern times with 'communism' or 'socialism.' … Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds … [Still,] reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended."
Pope John Paul II
was a harsh critic of communism, and other popes shared this view as well, for example Pope Pius IX
issued a Papal
encyclical
, entitled Quanta Cura
, in which he called "Communism and Socialism" the most fatal error. During the Spanish Civil War
, the Catholic Church opposed the left-leaning Republican forces due to their ties to communism and atrocities against Catholicism in Spain, and in many churches and schools prayers were made for the victory of Franco
.
Lúcia Santos
, a visionary of the Marian apparition at Fátima, Portugal
was known for her anti-communist beliefs, as well as the message of Fatima in general.
From 1945 onward Australian Labor Party
leadership accepted the assistance of an anti-Communist Roman Catholic movement, led by B.A. Santamaria to oppose communist subversion of Australian Trade Unions (Catholics being an important traditional support base). To oppose communist infiltration of unions Industrial Groups
were formed to regain control of them. The groups were active from 1945 to 1954, with the knowledge support of ALP leadership until after Labor's loss of the 1954 election, when federal leader Dr H.V. Evatt, in the context of his response to the Petrov affair
, blamed “subversive” activities of the "Groupers", for the defeat. After bitter public dispute many Groupers (including most members of the NSW and Victorian state executives and most Victorian Labor branches) were expelled from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (historical)
. In an attempt to force the ALP reform and remove communist influence, with a view to then rejoining the “purged” ALP, the DLP preferenced (see Australian electoral system
) the Liberal Party of Australia
, enabling them remain in power for over two decades. Their negative strategy failed, and after the Whitlam Labor Government during the 1970s it, the majority of the DLP decided to wind up the party in 1978, although a small Federal and State party continued based in Victoria (see Democratic Labor Party
) with state parties reformed in NSW and Qld in 2008.
After the sovietic occupation of Hungary During the final Stages of the Second World War, many clerigs were arrested. The case of the Archbishop
József Mindszenty of Esztergom
, head of the Catholic Church in Hungary was the most known. He was accused of treason to the communist ideas and was sent to trials and tortured during several years between 1949 and 1956. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the communism he was set free and after the failure of the movement he was forced to move to the United States' ambassy on Budapest
. There he lived until 1971 when the Vatican and the communist government of Hungary pacted his way out to Austria
. In the following years Mindszenty travelled for all over the world visiting the Hungarian colonies on Canada
, United States, Germany, Austria
, South Africa
and Venezuela
. He led a high critical campaign against the communist regime denouncing the atrocities committed by them against him and the Hungarian people. The communist government accused him and demanded that the Vatican remove him the title of archbishop of Esztergom and forbid him to keep giving public speechs about the communist torture ways and freedom privations. After a lot of polithical interventions, the Vatican was forced to accomplish what the sovietic regime demanded. However Mindszenty kept travelling all over the world being a real symbol of unity, cultural preservation, and hope for the Hungarian people, no matter their religion (Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics, etc.).
headquarters, Zhongnanhai
, in a silent protest following an incident in Tianjin
. Two months later the Chinese government banned the practice through a crackdown and began a large propaganda campaign. Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners in China have been reportedly subject to torture, illegal imprisonment, beatings, forced labor, organ harvesting
, and psychiatric abuses. Falun Gong has responded with their own media campaign, and have emerged as a notable voice of dissent against the Communist Party of China, by founding organizations such as the Epoch Times, NTDTV and the Shen Yun Performing Arts
to publicize their cause.
in Afghanistan, 1978. Before this, traditional Muslim clerics railed against Communist influences in Muslim societies, but any action beyond the sermons was rare. After the declaration in Kabul of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
, a Civil War began that spiralled into the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. This event elevated the ideology of Islamism
, which was rooted in Afghanistan's anti-Communist struggle, into a regional influence throughout South West Asia.
, a democratic socialist
, wrote two of the most widely read and influential anti-totalitarian novels: Nineteen Eighty-Four
and Animal Farm
, both of which featured allusions to the Soviet Union
under Joseph Stalin
.
Also on the left, Arthur Koestler
— a former member of the Communist Party — explored the ethics of revolution from an anti-communist perspective in a variety of works. His trilogy of early novels testified to Koestler's growing conviction that utopian ends do not justify the means often used by revolutionary governments. These novels are: The Gladiators (which explores the slave uprising led by Spartacus
in the Roman Empire as an allegory
for the Russian Revolution), Darkness at Noon
(based on the Moscow Trials
, this was a very widely read novel that made Koestler one of the most prominent anti-communist intellectuals of the period), and Arrival and Departure
.
Whittacker Chambers — an American ex-communist who became infamous for his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC), where he implicated Alger Hiss
— published an influential anti-communist memoir, Witness, in 1952.
Boris Pasternak
, a Russian writer, rose to international fame after his anti-communist novel Doctor Zhivago
was smuggled out of the Soviet Union (where it was banned) and published in the West
in 1957. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature, much to the chagrin of the Soviet authorities.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian
novelist, dramatist and historian
. Through his writings, — particularly The Gulag Archipelago
and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
, his two best-known works — he made the world aware of the Gulag
, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system. For these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1970, and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
Herta Müller
is a Romania
n-born German
novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania
under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu
regime, the history of the Germans in the Banat
(and more broadly, Transylvania
), and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans
by Stalinist
Soviet occupying forces in Romania
and the Soviet-imposed Communist regime of Romania. Müller has been an internationally-known author since the early 1990s, and her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. She has received over 20 awards, including the 1994 Kleist Prize
, the 1995 Aristeion Prize
, the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
, the 2009 Franz Werfel Human Rights Award
and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature
.
Ayn Rand
was a Russian-American 20th century writer who was an enthusiastic supporter of laissez-faire
capitalism
. She wrote We the Living
about the effects of Communism in Russia.
(also translated The Tenderfoot and the Tart) is a play in four acts by Russian
author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
. It is set over the course of about one week in 1945 in a Stalin-era Soviet prison camp. As in many of Solzhenitsyn's works, the author paints a vivid and honest picture of the suffering prisoners and their incompetent but powerful wardens. Most of the prisoners depicted in the play are serving 10 year sentences for violations of Soviet Penal Code Article 58. In this play, the author first explores the analogy of the camp system to a separate nation within the Soviet Union
, an analogy which would dominate his later work, most clearly in The Gulag Archipelago
.
was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet-bloc; individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s. This grassroots
practice to evade officially imposed censorship
was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored
materials. Vladimir Bukovsky
defined it as follows: "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it."
During the Cold War, Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters which enabled broadcasters to be heard in the Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by authorities to jam
such signals. In 1947, VOA started broadcasting in Russian
with the intent to counter Soviet propaganda directed against American leaders and policies. These included Radio Free Europe
(RFE)), RIAS (Berlin)
the Voice of America
(VOA), Deutsche Welle
, Radio France International and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The Soviet Union responded by attempting aggressive, electronic jamming
of VOA (and some other Western) broadcasts on 1949. The BBC World Service
similarly broadcast language-specific programming to countries behind the Iron Curtain
.
In the People's Republic of China, people have to bypass the Chinese Internet censorship
and other forms of censorship.
(PACE), issued on January 25, 2006 during its winter session, "strongly condemns crimes of totalitarian communist regimes".
The European Parliament has proposed making 23 August a Europe-wide day of remembrance for 20th-century Nazi and communist crimes.
, and other anti-communist movements in addition to the winning communist group. Stemming was the unsuccessful Western-backed campaign of toppling the communist government through the infiltration of dissidents into the country that was made possible from the unification of the four anti-communist groups Legaliteti, Balli Kombëtar
, Independents' Block, and the Kosovars' Group.
In 1946, an armed uprising took place in Postribë
whereby more than a dozen participants were killed and others imprisoned. In 1973, a number of prisoners at the Spac
concentration camp staged a rebellion where the non-communist flag was raised. In 1984, a similar rebellion took place at the prison of Qafë Bar.
Albania has enacted the Law on Communist Genocide with the purpose of expediting the prosecution of the violations of the basic human rights
and freedoms by the former communist governments of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania. The law has also been referred to in English as the "Genocide Law" and the "Law on Communist Genocide".
The Velvet Revolution
or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent
revolution
in Czechoslovakia
that saw the overthrow of the Communist government. It is seen as one of the most important of the Revolutions of 1989
.
On November 17, 1989, a Friday, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration
in Prague
. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swollen from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two-hour general strike
, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27. In June 1990 Czechoslovakia held its first democratic
election
s since 1946.
Memorials for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
are held every year in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands people have attended the candlelight vigil.
, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. The revolt began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest
to the Parliament building
. A student delegation entering the radio building
in an attempt to broadcast its demands
was detained. When the delegation's release was demanded by the demonstrators outside, they were fired upon by the State Security Police
(ÁVH) from within the building. The news spread quickly and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital. The revolt spread quickly across Hungary
, and the government fell. After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution.
n government and allied militia
.
, in which over 20,000 people accused of being Communists were purged from their places of employment.
is a loosely organized anti-communist movement in the People's Republic of China
. The movement began during Beijing Spring
in 1978 and played an important role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
. The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion had some anti-communist leanings. In the 1990s, the movement underwent a decline both within China
and overseas, and is currently fragmented and not considered by most analysts to be a serious threat to power to the Communist Party's rule.
Charter 08
is a manifesto
signed by over 303 Chinese intellectual
s and human rights
activists to promote political reform and democratization
in the People's Republic of China
.
As a document of Chinese origin, it is unusual in calling for greater freedom of expression
and for free election
s. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and its name is a reference to Charter 77
, issued by dissident
s in Czechoslovakia.
Since its release, more than 8,100 people inside and outside of China have signed the charter.
Lenin
saw Poland as the bridge which the Red Army
would have to cross in order to assist the other communist movements
and help bring about other European revolutions. Poland was the first country which successfully stopped a communist military advance. Between February 1919 and March 1921, Poland's successful defence of its independence was known as the Polish–Soviet War. According to American sociologist Alexander Gella, "the Polish victory had gained twenty years of independence not only for Poland, but at least for an entire central part of Europe."
After the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, the first Polish uprising during World War II
was against the Soviets. The Czortków Uprising
occurred during January 21–22, 1940, in the Soviet-occupied Podolia
. Teenagers from local high schools stormed the local Red Army
barracks and a prison, in order to release Polish soldiers who had been imprisoned there.
In the latter years of the war, there were increasing conflicts between Polish and Soviet partisans
, and some groups continued to oppose the Soviets long after the war. Between 1944 and 1946, soldiers of the anti-communist armed groups, known as the cursed soldiers
, made a series of attacks on communist prisons immediately following the end of World War II
in Poland
. The last of the cursed soldiers
, members of the militant anti-communist resistance in Poland
, was Józef Franczak
, who was killed with a pistol in his hand by ZOMO
in 1963.
Poznań 1956 protests
were massive anti-communist protests in the People's Republic of Poland
. Protesters were repressed by the regime.
The Polish 1970 protests
were anti-Comintern protests which occurred in northern Poland
in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase in the prices of food and other everyday items. As a result of the riots, brutally put down by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia
, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded.
Solidarity was an anti-communist trade union in a Warsaw Pact
country. In the 1980s, it constituted a broad anti-communist movement. The government attempted to destroy the union during the period of martial law in the early 1980s
, and several years of repression, however, in the end, it had to start negotiating with the union. The Round Table Talks
between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August, a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed, and in December 1990, Wałęsa was elected President of Poland. Since then, it has become a more traditional trade union.
lasted between 1948 and the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime. It was not until the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu
in late 1989 that details about what was called “anti-communist armed resistance” were made public. It was only then that the public learned about the numerous small groups of "haiducs" who had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains
, where some resisted for ten years against the troops of the Securitate
. The last “haiduc” was killed in the mountains of Banat
in 1962. The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movement in the former Soviet bloc
.
The Romanian Revolution of 1989
was a week-long series of increasingly violent riots and fighting in late December 1989 that overthrew the Government of Nicolae Ceauşescu
. After a trial, Ceauşescu and his wife Elena
were executed. Romania
was the only Eastern Bloc
country to overthrow its government violently or to execute its leaders.
emerged on April 7, 2009, in major cities of Moldova
after the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) had allegedly rigged elections.
The anti-communists organized themselves using an online social network service
, Twitter
, hence its moniker used by the media, the Twitter Revolution or Grape revolution.
anti-Communist partisans fought during World War II, on the Yugoslav Front: nationalist and royalist paramilitary Chetniks
conducted a guerilla war against much the stronger Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans, the latter heavily sponsored by the Allied powers
, in the last two years of war.
s of South America
implemented Operation Condor
, a campaign of political repression
involving assassinations and other intelligence operations. The campaign was aimed at eradicating alleged communist and socialist influences in their respective countries, and control opposition against the government, which resulted in a large number of deaths. Participatory governments include Argentina
, Bolivia
, Brazil
, Chile
, Paraguay
and Uruguay
, with limited support from the United States
.
The first major manifestation of anti-communism in the United States occurred in 1919 and 1920, during the First Red Scare
, led by Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer
. During the Red Scare, the Lusk Committee investigated those suspected of sedition, and many laws were passed in the US that sanctioned the firings of Communists. First came the Hatch Act of 1939
which was sponsored by Carl Hatch
of New Mexico
. This law attempted to drive Communism out of public work places. The Hatch Act outlawed the hiring of federal workers who advocated the "overthrow of our Constitutional form of government". This phrase was specifically directed at the Communist Party. Later in the spring of 1941 another anti-communist law, Public Law 135, was passed. This law sanctioned the investigation of any federal worker suspected of being communist and the firing of any communist worker.
Following World War II
and the rise of the Soviet Union, many anti-communists in the United States feared that Communism would triumph throughout the entire world and eventually be a direct threat to the US government. This fear led to the domino theory
, which stated that a Communist takeover in any nation could not be tolerated because it would lead to a chain reaction that would result in worldwide Communism. There were fears that powerful Communist states such as the Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of China
were using their power to forcibly assimilate other countries into Communist rule. The Soviet Union's expansion into central Europe
after World War II was seen as evidence of this. The US policy of halting further Communist expansion came to be known as containment
. This period, up to 1957, is known as the Second Red Scare.
The deepening of the Cold War
in the 1950s saw a dramatic increase in anti-communism in the United States, including the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism
. Thousands of Americans, such as the filmmaker Charlie Chaplin
, were accused of being Communists or sympathizers, and many became the subject of aggressive investigations by government committees such as the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result of sometimes vastly exaggerated accusations, many of the accused lost their jobs and became blacklisted, although most of these verdicts were later overturned. This was also the period of the McCarran Internal Security Act and the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
trial. After the collapse of the Soviet Union many records were made public that in fact verified that many of those thought to be falsely accused for political purposes were in fact Communist spies or sympathizers (see Venona Project
).
During the 1980s, the Ronald Reagan
administration pursued an aggressive policy against the Soviet Union and its allies by building up weapons programs, including the Strategic Defense Initiative
. The Reagan Doctrine
was implemented to reduce the influence of the Soviet Union worldwide by providing aid to anti-Soviet resistance movements, including the Contras
in Nicaragua
and the Mujahideen
s in Afghanistan
. The accidental downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island
by the Soviets on Sept. 1, 1983 contributed to the anti-communism propaganda of the 1980s. KAL 007 had been carrying 269 people, including a sitting U.S. Congressman, Larry McDonald
.
The US government usually argued its anti-communist policies by citing the human rights record of communist states, most notably the Soviet Union during the Joseph Stalin
era, Maoist
China, North Korea
, and the Pol Pot
-led Khmer Rouge
government and the pro-Hanoi
People's Republic of Kampuchea
in Cambodia
. Those states killed millions of their own people and continued to suppress civil liberties of the surviving population. During the 1980s, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine
was particularly influential in American politics; it advocated US support of anti-communist governments around the world, including authoritarian regimes.
Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc
Communist regimes in Europe between 1989 and 1991; the fear of a worldwide Communist takeover was no longer a serious concern. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in US foreign policy toward Cuba
and North Korea
. In the case of Cuba, the US continues to maintain economic sanctions
against the country. Tensions with North Korea have heightened as the result of reports that it is stockpiling nuclear weapons, and the assertion that it is willing to sell its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
technology to any group willing to pay a high enough price. Much of the US foreign policy establishment does not regard the People's Republic of China
as communist in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, there is some hostility toward the Chinese government, particularly among conservative Congressional Republicans. For example, national security issues were raised during Chinese state-owned CNOOC Ltd.'s takeover bid for Unocal, an American energy firm.
, anti-communist movements, including those from pro-democracy and pro-human rights groups, had largely been limited before the advent of the Internet
. This was due to repression of dissidents as well as the Vietnamese government's efforts in censorship and propaganda regarding foreign and domestic policies, including examination of personal mails (especially those sent from overseas), and a heavy censorship of foreign media broadcasts.
Prior to the arrival of the Internet, much of the global anti-communist activities directed towards Vietnam were religious in nature. Clerical North American and European organizations voiced concerns about religious oppressions. Of particular robustness were the organizations of Monsignor Tran Van Hoai, the first Director of the Vatican's Center of Pastoral Apostolate for Overseas Vietnamese.
In recent years, there have been many Vietnamese bloggers who, with the aid of the World Wide Web
, have disseminated information critical of Ho Chi Minh
and the Vietnamese government's relations with the People's Republic of China
, the most controversial of which are deals struck between the two communist countries' leaders, such as territorial claims of islands in the South China Sea
. These have sparked intense nationalism and led to much outrage felt even on the part of many Vietnamese themselves. The culmination of the sentiments can be seen in many recent protests held in both former North Vietnam
's capital Hanoi
and former South Vietnam
's capital Saigon.
Frequent arrests of some democracy advocates by the government have also led to activism among many Vietnamese who demand an release of all political dissidents as well as greater clarity in their trials. Recently, there have also been protests against the government blocking access to free networking
and blogging services such as Facebook
, Wordpress
, as well as calls for a unified effort in boycotting government sanctioned blogging services like the so-called "Yahoo! Việt Nam 360plus".
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
in 1947.
Objections to communist theory
Most anti-communists reject the concept of historical materialismHistorical materialism
Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
, which is a central idea in Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Anti-communists reject the Marxist belief that capitalism will be followed by socialism and communism, just as feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
was followed by capitalism. Anti-communists question the validity of the Marxist claim that the socialist state will "wither away" when it becomes unnecessary in a true communist society.
Anti-communists argue that the repression in the early years of the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
regime, while not as extreme as that during Stalin's reign, was still severe by reasonable standards, citing examples such as Felix Dzerzhinsky's secret police, which eliminated numerous political opponents by extrajudicial executions, and the brutal crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion
Kronstadt rebellion
The Kronstadt rebellion was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War...
and Tambov rebellion
Tambov Rebellion
The Tambov Rebellion which occurred between 1920 and 1921 was one of the largest and best-organized peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War. The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and part of the Voronezh Oblast, less than...
. Some anti-communists refer to both Communism and fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
as totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
, seeing similarity between the actions of communist and fascist governments. Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
, a former Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and British Intelligence officer
SPY
SPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
, argued that Communism was responsible for tens of millions of deaths during the 20th century.
Opponents argue that Communist parties that have come to power have tended to be rigidly intolerant of political opposition. These opponents claim that most Communist countries have shown no signs of advancing from Marx's socialist stage of economy to an ideal communist stage. Rather, Communist governments have been accused of creating a new ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
(called the Nomenklatura
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the...
by Russians), with powers and privileges greater than those previously enjoyed by the upper classes in the pre-revolutionary regimes.
Left-wing anti-communism
Since the split of the Communist Parties from the socialist Second InternationalSecond International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
to form the Communist Third International, democratic socialists and social democrats have been in conflict with Communism, criticising it for its anti-democratic nature. Examples of left-wing critics of Communist states and parties are George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, Boris Souveraine, Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
, Irving Howe
Irving Howe
Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...
and Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...
.
Anarchists
Although many anarchists describe themselves as communistsAnarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
(spelled with a lower case c), all anarchists criticize authoritarian Communist parties and states. They argue that Marxist concepts such as dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
and state ownership of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
are anathema to anarchism. Some anarchists criticize communism from an individualist
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
or anarcho-capitalist point of view.
The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
debated with Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
in the First International, arguing that the Marxist state is another form of oppression. He loathed the idea of a vanguard party
Vanguard party
A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
ruling the masses from above. Anarchists initially participated in, and rejoiced over, the 1917 revolution
February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
as an example of workers taking power for themselves. However, after the October revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, it became evident that the Bolsheviks and the anarchists had very different ideas. Anarchist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, deported from the United States to Russia in 1919, was initially enthusiastic about the revolution, but was left sorely disappointed, and began to write her book My Disillusionment in Russia
My Disillusionment in Russia
My Disillusionment in Russia is a book published in 1923 by Emma Goldman describing her experiences in Soviet Russia from 1920 to 1921, where she saw the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. Anarchist Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, proffered trenchant criticism of the emergent Bolshevik bureaucracy in letters to Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, noting in 1920: "[a party dictatorship] is positively harmful for the building of a new socialist system. What is needed is local construction by local forces ... Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name." Many anarchists fought against Russian, Spanish and Greek Communists; many were killed by them, such as Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist....
and Constantinos Speras
Constantinos Speras
Constantinos Speras was a Greek anarcho-syndicalist, and one of the pioneers of the working class trade-union movement in Greece. He spent the biggest part of his life in prison and in exile, totalling 109 times...
. As well a lot of anarchists were massacred in concentration camps by Communists.
Conservatives
The communist principle of redistribution of wealth acquired in capitalist accumulation is held by anti-communists to be opposed to the principle of voluntary free tradeFree trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
. Furthermore many capitalist theorists believe that communism interferes with the price mechanism that is only optimized in private competition. See economic calculation debate.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx lays out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution of land and production, and Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
argues that the initial and ongoing forms of redistribution constitute direct coercion. Neither Marx's 10-point plan nor the rest of the manifesto say anything about who has the right to carry out the plan. Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
argued that the absence of voluntary economic activity makes it too easy for repressive political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers. Friedman's view was also shared by Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
and John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, both of whom believed that capitalism is vital for freedom to survive and thrive.
Many capitalist critics see a key error in communist economic theory, which predicts that in capitalist societies, the bourgeoisie will accumulate ever-increasing capital and wealth, while the lower classes become more dependent on the ruling class for survival, selling their labor power
Labor power
Labour power is a crucial concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. He regarded labour power as the most important of the productive forces of human beings. Labour power can be simply defined as work-capacity, the ability to do work...
for the most minimal of salaries, blaming the effect on capitalism. Anti-communists point to the overall rise in the average standard of living
Standard of living
Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as real income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality and educational standards are also used. Examples are access to certain goods , or measures of health such as...
in the non-communist West and claim that both the rich and poor have steadily gotten richer. Anti-communists argue that former Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
countries that have successfully escaped poverty in recent decades have done so using capitalism, most notably India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. Anti-communists cite the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
as an example how a Communist regime in the Third World failed to achieve development or economic growth.
Objectivism
ObjectivistsObjectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
argue that wealth (or any other human value) is the creation of individual minds, that human nature requires motivation by personal incentive, and therefore, that only political and economic freedom are consistent with human prosperity. This is demonstrated, they believe, by the comparative prosperity of free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
and socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
economies. Objectivist Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
writes that communist leaders typically claim to work for the common good, but many or all of them have been corrupt and totalitarian.
Sociobiology
SociobiologistSociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
Edward O. Wilson said "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species," meaning that while ant
Ant
Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...
s and other social insects appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to because they lack reproductive independence. Worker ants are sterile, and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, so ants are forced to live in centralised societies. Humans possess reproductive independence, so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen". According to Wilson, humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their families, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.
Ex-communists
Many ex-communists have turned into anti-communists. Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
turned from a Communist into a social democrat. Milovan Đilas, was a former Yugoslav
Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs is a national designation used by a minority of South Slavs across the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the diaspora...
Communist official, who became a prominent dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
and critic of Communism. Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish Communist who became a famous anti-communist. He was best known for his critical analyses of Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism, which is "considered by some to be one of the most important books on political theory of the 20th century." The God That Failed
The God that Failed
The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-communists, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of communism...
is a 1949 book which collects together six essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of Communism. The promotional byline
Byline
The byline on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name, and often the position, of the writer of the article. Bylines are traditionally placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines place bylines at the bottom of the page, to leave more room for graphical...
to the book is "Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about Communism." Another notable anti-communist was Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
, a former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
spy who testified against his fellow spies before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
.
Other anti-communists who were once Marxists include the writers Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, James Burnham
James Burnham
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years he left Marxism and produced...
, Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life.-Biography:...
, Frank Meyer
Frank Meyer
Frank Straus Meyer was a libertarian political philosopher and co-founding editor of the National Review magazine.-Personal life:...
, Will Herberg
Will Herberg
Will Herberg was an American Jewish writer, intellectual and scholar. He was known as a social philosopher and sociologist of religion, as well as a Jewish theologian.-Early life:...
, Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist treatise The God that Failed, The Life of Lenin, which won a 1965 National Book Award, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...
, Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an award-winning British columnist and author, noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, The Broken Compass and most recently The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for...
and Richard Wright
Richard Wright
Richard Wright may refer to:* Richard Wright , African-American novelist, writer, poet, essayist* Richard Wright , also known as Rick Wright, English musician, founding member of Pink Floyd...
. Anti-communists who were once socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, modern liberals or social democrats
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
include: John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain
John Angus Chamberlain is an American sculptor.Born in Rochester, Indiana, John Chamberlain spent much of his youth in Chicago. After serving in the navy from 1943 to 1946, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College...
, Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
, Raymond Moley
Raymond Moley
Raymond Charles Moley was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent before the end of the Great Depression....
, Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
and Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...
.
Fascism and far-right politics
Fascism is often considered a reaction to communist and socialist uprisings in Europe. Italian fascism, founded and led by Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
, took power with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist unrest led many conservatives
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
to fear that a communist revolution was inevitable. Historians Ian Kershaw
Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich...
and Joachim Fest
Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance...
argue that in post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascistic political parties contending for the leadership of Germany’s anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
movement, and of the German state. The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
, its support of class conflict
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility to small businessmen, and its atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
. Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
, favouring instead a stratified
Social stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...
economy with classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
, and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.
In Europe, numerous aristocrats
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, conservative intellectuals, capitalists and industrialists lent their support to fascist movements. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, several other anti-communist regimes and groups supported Nazism: the Falange
Falange
The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....
in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
; the Vichy regime
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
and the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism
Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism
The Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism was a collaborationist French militia founded on July 8, 1941. It gathered various collaborationist parties, including Marcel Bucard's Mouvement Franciste, Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally, Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party, Eugène...
(Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
Infantry Regiment 638) in France; the Cliveden set
Cliveden set
The Cliveden Set were a 1930s right-wing, upper class group of prominent individuals politically influential in pre-World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor...
, Lord Halifax, and associates of Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
in Britain.; and, in South America, movements such as Brazilian Integralism
Brazilian Integralism
Brazilian Integralism was a fascist political movement in Brazil, created on October 1932. Founded and led by Plínio Salgado, a literary figure who was somewhat famous for his participation in the 1922 Modern Art Week, the movement had adopted some characteristics of European mass movements of...
.
Anti-communism remained a theme in far right politics after the war. For example, in the US, Frank L. Britton, editor of The American Nationalist published a book, Behind Communism, in 1952 which disseminated the myth that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy originating in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
.
Buddhists
Thích Huyền Quang was a prominent VietnamVietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese Buddhist monk
Bhikkhu
A Bhikkhu or Bhikṣu is an ordained male Buddhist monastic. A female monastic is called a Bhikkhuni Nepali: ). The life of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis is governed by a set of rules called the patimokkha within the vinaya's framework of monastic discipline...
and anti-communist dissident. In 1977, Huyền Quang wrote a letter to Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Vietnam
-Office:The Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is the head of the executive branch of the Vietnamese government. The Prime Minister presides over the Vietnamese cabinet, and is responsible for appointing and supervising ministers...
Phạm Văn Đồng detailing counts of oppression by the Communist regime. For this, he and five other senior monks were arrested and detained. In 1982, Huyền Quang was arrested and subsequently put into permanent house arrest for opposition to government policy after publicly denouncing the establishment of the state-controlled Vietnam Buddhist Church. Thích Quảng Độ is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and anti-communist dissident. In January 2008, the Europe-based magazine A Different View
A Different View
A Different View is the International Association for Political Science Students' monthly Online Magazine. Founded in 2005, ADV deals with a wide range of topics including political, social, cultural and/or economic affairs....
chose Ven. Thích Quảng Độ as one of the 15 Champions of World Democracy.
Christians
The Catholic Church has a history of anti-communism. The most recent Catechism of the Catholic ChurchCatechism of the Catholic Church
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the official text of the teachings of the Catholic Church. A provisional, "reference text" was issued by Pope John Paul II on October 11, 1992 — "the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council" — with his apostolic...
states: "The Catholic Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
ideologies associated in modern times with 'communism' or 'socialism.' … Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds … [Still,] reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended."
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
was a harsh critic of communism, and other popes shared this view as well, for example Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX
Blessed Pope Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal...
issued a Papal
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
encyclical
Encyclical
An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Catholic Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop...
, entitled Quanta Cura
Quanta Cura
There is also an earlier encyclical of the same title, issued in 1741 by Pope Benedict XIV, forbidding traffic in alms. -Historical context:The encyclical was prompted by the September Convention of 1864, an agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Second French Empire of Napoleon III,...
, in which he called "Communism and Socialism" the most fatal error. During the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, the Catholic Church opposed the left-leaning Republican forces due to their ties to communism and atrocities against Catholicism in Spain, and in many churches and schools prayers were made for the victory of Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
.
Lúcia Santos
Lúcia Santos
Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos – Sister Mary Lucy of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart, better known as Sister Lúcia of Fátima – was a Roman Catholic Discalced Carmelite nun from Portugal...
, a visionary of the Marian apparition at Fátima, Portugal
Fátima, Portugal
Fátima is a city in Portugal famous for the Marian apparitions, recognized by the Catholic Church, that took place there in 1917. The town itself has a population of 7,756 and is located in the municipality of Ourém, in the Centro Region and Médio Tejo Subregion...
was known for her anti-communist beliefs, as well as the message of Fatima in general.
From 1945 onward Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
leadership accepted the assistance of an anti-Communist Roman Catholic movement, led by B.A. Santamaria to oppose communist subversion of Australian Trade Unions (Catholics being an important traditional support base). To oppose communist infiltration of unions Industrial Groups
Industrial Groups
The Industrial Groups were groups formed by the Australian Labor Party in the late 1940s, to combat Communist Party influence in the trade unions....
were formed to regain control of them. The groups were active from 1945 to 1954, with the knowledge support of ALP leadership until after Labor's loss of the 1954 election, when federal leader Dr H.V. Evatt, in the context of his response to the Petrov affair
Petrov Affair
The Petrov Affair was a dramatic Cold War spy incident in Australia in April 1954, concerning Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary of the Soviet embassy in Canberra.- History :...
, blamed “subversive” activities of the "Groupers", for the defeat. After bitter public dispute many Groupers (including most members of the NSW and Victorian state executives and most Victorian Labor branches) were expelled from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (historical)
Democratic Labor Party (historical)
The Democratic Labor Party was an Australian political party that existed from 1955 until 1978.-History:The DLP was formed as a result of a split in the Australian Labor Party that began in 1954. The split was between the party's national leadership, under the then party leader Dr H.V...
. In an attempt to force the ALP reform and remove communist influence, with a view to then rejoining the “purged” ALP, the DLP preferenced (see Australian electoral system
Australian electoral system
The Australian electoral system has evolved over nearly 150 years of continuous democratic government, and has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting, preferential voting and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate.- Compulsory voting...
) the Liberal Party of Australia
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
, enabling them remain in power for over two decades. Their negative strategy failed, and after the Whitlam Labor Government during the 1970s it, the majority of the DLP decided to wind up the party in 1978, although a small Federal and State party continued based in Victoria (see Democratic Labor Party
Democratic Labor Party
The Democratic Labor Party is a political party in Australia that espouses social conservatism and opposes neo-liberalism. The first "DLP" Senator in decades, party vice-president John Madigan was elected to the Australian Senate with 2.3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria at the 2010 federal...
) with state parties reformed in NSW and Qld in 2008.
After the sovietic occupation of Hungary During the final Stages of the Second World War, many clerigs were arrested. The case of the Archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
József Mindszenty of Esztergom
Esztergom
Esztergom , is a city in northern Hungary, 46 km north-west of the capital Budapest. It lies in Komárom-Esztergom county, on the right bank of the river Danube, which forms the border with Slovakia there....
, head of the Catholic Church in Hungary was the most known. He was accused of treason to the communist ideas and was sent to trials and tortured during several years between 1949 and 1956. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the communism he was set free and after the failure of the movement he was forced to move to the United States' ambassy on Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
. There he lived until 1971 when the Vatican and the communist government of Hungary pacted his way out to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. In the following years Mindszenty travelled for all over the world visiting the Hungarian colonies on Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, United States, Germany, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
. He led a high critical campaign against the communist regime denouncing the atrocities committed by them against him and the Hungarian people. The communist government accused him and demanded that the Vatican remove him the title of archbishop of Esztergom and forbid him to keep giving public speechs about the communist torture ways and freedom privations. After a lot of polithical interventions, the Vatican was forced to accomplish what the sovietic regime demanded. However Mindszenty kept travelling all over the world being a real symbol of unity, cultural preservation, and hope for the Hungarian people, no matter their religion (Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics, etc.).
Falun Gong
In April 1999, over ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners gathered at Communist Party of ChinaCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
headquarters, Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai is an area in central Beijing, China adjacent to the Forbidden City which serves as the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China and the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The term Zhongnanhai is closely linked with the central government and senior Communist...
, in a silent protest following an incident in Tianjin
Tianjin
' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...
. Two months later the Chinese government banned the practice through a crackdown and began a large propaganda campaign. Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners in China have been reportedly subject to torture, illegal imprisonment, beatings, forced labor, organ harvesting
Organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China
Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China has taken place since the 1960s, and is one of the largest organ transplant programmes in the world, peaking at over 13,000 transplants a year in 2004...
, and psychiatric abuses. Falun Gong has responded with their own media campaign, and have emerged as a notable voice of dissent against the Communist Party of China, by founding organizations such as the Epoch Times, NTDTV and the Shen Yun Performing Arts
Shen Yun Performing Arts
Shen Yun Performing Arts, formerly known as Divine Performing Arts, is a performing arts and entertainment company based in New York City...
to publicize their cause.
Muslims
After the taming of Central Asian Muslim Khanates by the Soviet Union, Soviet-style Communists did not have any largescale interaction with Muslim populations until the Saur RevolutionSaur Revolution
The Saur Revolution is the name given to the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan takeover of political power from the government of Afghanistan on 28 April 1978. The word 'Saur', i.e...
in Afghanistan, 1978. Before this, traditional Muslim clerics railed against Communist influences in Muslim societies, but any action beyond the sermons was rare. After the declaration in Kabul of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was both ideologically close to and economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.- Saur Revolution :...
, a Civil War began that spiralled into the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. This event elevated the ideology of Islamism
Islamism
Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...
, which was rooted in Afghanistan's anti-Communist struggle, into a regional influence throughout South West Asia.
Literature
George OrwellGeorge Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, a democratic socialist
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
, wrote two of the most widely read and influential anti-totalitarian novels: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
and Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
, both of which featured allusions to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
under Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
Also on the left, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
— a former member of the Communist Party — explored the ethics of revolution from an anti-communist perspective in a variety of works. His trilogy of early novels testified to Koestler's growing conviction that utopian ends do not justify the means often used by revolutionary governments. These novels are: The Gladiators (which explores the slave uprising led by Spartacus
Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...
in the Roman Empire as an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
for the Russian Revolution), Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
(based on the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
, this was a very widely read novel that made Koestler one of the most prominent anti-communist intellectuals of the period), and Arrival and Departure
Arrival and Departure
Arrival and Departure is the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy concerning the conflict between morality and expediency . The first volume, The Gladiators, is about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt, and the second, Darkness at Noon, is the celebrated novel about the Soviet Show trials...
.
Whittacker Chambers — an American ex-communist who became infamous for his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC), where he implicated Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
— published an influential anti-communist memoir, Witness, in 1952.
Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
, a Russian writer, rose to international fame after his anti-communist novel Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago
-Original creation:*Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, published in 1957**Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, a fictional character and the main protagonist of the book Doctor Zhivago-Adaptations:There are several adaptations based on the Doctor Zhivago book:...
was smuggled out of the Soviet Union (where it was banned) and published in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
in 1957. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature, much to the chagrin of the Soviet authorities.
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
novelist, dramatist and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
. Through his writings, — particularly The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system. The three-volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp...
and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir . The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov...
, his two best-known works — he made the world aware of the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system. For these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1970, and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
Herta Müller
Herta Müller
Herta Müller is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime which she experienced herself...
is a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n-born German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
regime, the history of the Germans in the Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
(and more broadly, Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
), and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans
Germans of Romania
The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 760,000 strong in 1930. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:...
by Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
Soviet occupying forces in Romania
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
and the Soviet-imposed Communist regime of Romania. Müller has been an internationally-known author since the early 1990s, and her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. She has received over 20 awards, including the 1994 Kleist Prize
Kleist Prize
The Kleist Prize is an annual German literature prize. The prize was first awarded in 1912, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Heinrich von Kleist. The Kleist Prize was the most important literary award of the Weimar Republic, but was discontinued in 1933.In 1985 the prize...
, the 1995 Aristeion Prize
Aristeion Prize
The Aristeion Prize is a European prize, awarded for significant contributions to contemporary literature, and exceptional translations of contemporary literature. The prize is awarded in a different Capital of Culture each year...
, the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...
, the 2009 Franz Werfel Human Rights Award
Franz Werfel Human Rights Award
The Franz Werfel Human Rights Award is an international human rights award in Europe. It is awarded to individuals or groups who, through political, artistic, philosophical or practical work, have opposed breaches of human rights by genocide, ethnic cleansing and the deliberate destruction of...
and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
was a Russian-American 20th century writer who was an enthusiastic supporter of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. She wrote We the Living
We the Living
We the Living is the first novel published by the Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand. It was also Rand's first statement against communism. First published in 1936, it is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Rand observes in the foreword to this book that We the Living was the closest she...
about the effects of Communism in Russia.
Performing arts
The Love-Girl and the InnocentThe Love-Girl and the Innocent
The Love-Girl and the Innocent is a play in four acts by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is set over the course of about one week in 1945 in a Joseph Stalin-era Soviet prison camp...
(also translated The Tenderfoot and the Tart) is a play in four acts by Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
. It is set over the course of about one week in 1945 in a Stalin-era Soviet prison camp. As in many of Solzhenitsyn's works, the author paints a vivid and honest picture of the suffering prisoners and their incompetent but powerful wardens. Most of the prisoners depicted in the play are serving 10 year sentences for violations of Soviet Penal Code Article 58. In this play, the author first explores the analogy of the camp system to a separate nation within the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, an analogy which would dominate his later work, most clearly in The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system. The three-volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp...
.
Evasion of censorship
SamizdatSamizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet-bloc; individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s. This grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
practice to evade officially imposed censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
materials. Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist....
defined it as follows: "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it."
During the Cold War, Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters which enabled broadcasters to be heard in the Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by authorities to jam
Radio jamming
Radio jamming is the transmission of radio signals that disrupt communications by decreasing the signal to noise ratio. Unintentional jamming occurs when an operator transmits on a busy frequency without first checking whether it is in use, or without being able to hear stations using the frequency...
such signals. In 1947, VOA started broadcasting in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
with the intent to counter Soviet propaganda directed against American leaders and policies. These included Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
(RFE)), RIAS (Berlin)
Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor
RIAS was a radio and television station in the American Sector of Berlin during the Cold War. It was founded by the US occupational authorities after World War II in 1946 to provide the German population in and around Berlin with news and political reporting and was initially only broadcast on...
the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
(VOA), Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
, Radio France International and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The Soviet Union responded by attempting aggressive, electronic jamming
Radio jamming
Radio jamming is the transmission of radio signals that disrupt communications by decreasing the signal to noise ratio. Unintentional jamming occurs when an operator transmits on a busy frequency without first checking whether it is in use, or without being able to hear stations using the frequency...
of VOA (and some other Western) broadcasts on 1949. The BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
similarly broadcast language-specific programming to countries behind the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
.
In the People's Republic of China, people have to bypass the Chinese Internet censorship
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
and other forms of censorship.
Council of Europe and European Union
Resolution 1481/2006 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of EuropeParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , which held its first session in Strasbourg on 10 August 1949, can be considered the oldest international parliamentary assembly with a pluralistic composition of democratically elected members of parliament established on the basis of an...
(PACE), issued on January 25, 2006 during its winter session, "strongly condemns crimes of totalitarian communist regimes".
The European Parliament has proposed making 23 August a Europe-wide day of remembrance for 20th-century Nazi and communist crimes.
Albania
In 1945, Mit'hat Frashëri compiled a political platform proposing the formation of a coalition government including, members of nationalist Legaliteti, Balli KombëtarBalli Kombëtar
Balli Kombëtar was an Albanian nationalist, anti-communist and anti-monarchy organization established in October 1939. It was led by Ali Këlcyra and Mit’hat Frashëri...
, and other anti-communist movements in addition to the winning communist group. Stemming was the unsuccessful Western-backed campaign of toppling the communist government through the infiltration of dissidents into the country that was made possible from the unification of the four anti-communist groups Legaliteti, Balli Kombëtar
Balli Kombëtar
Balli Kombëtar was an Albanian nationalist, anti-communist and anti-monarchy organization established in October 1939. It was led by Ali Këlcyra and Mit’hat Frashëri...
, Independents' Block, and the Kosovars' Group.
In 1946, an armed uprising took place in Postribë
Postribë
Postribë is a municipality in the Shkodër District, Shkodër County, northwestern Albania....
whereby more than a dozen participants were killed and others imprisoned. In 1973, a number of prisoners at the Spac
SPAC
SPAC may refer to:* The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York* South Philippine Adventist College* Special purpose acquisition company* Spaç Prison...
concentration camp staged a rebellion where the non-communist flag was raised. In 1984, a similar rebellion took place at the prison of Qafë Bar.
Albania has enacted the Law on Communist Genocide with the purpose of expediting the prosecution of the violations of the basic human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and freedoms by the former communist governments of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania. The law has also been referred to in English as the "Genocide Law" and the "Law on Communist Genocide".
Czechoslovakia
Uprising in Plzeň was an anti-communist revolt by Czechoslovakian workers in 1953.The Velvet Revolution
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent
Nonviolence
Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...
revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
that saw the overthrow of the Communist government. It is seen as one of the most important of the Revolutions of 1989
Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...
.
On November 17, 1989, a Friday, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration
Student activism
Student activism is work done by students to effect political, environmental, economic, or social change. It has often focused on making changes in schools, such as increasing student influence over curriculum or improving educational funding...
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swollen from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two-hour general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27. In June 1990 Czechoslovakia held its first democratic
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
s since 1946.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong has had numerous anti-communist protests. Some are even opposed to the end of the HKSAR on July 1, 2047, the day on which Hong Kong is scheduled to be fully assimilated into communist China.Memorials for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Memorials for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
In the days following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, many memorials and vigils were held around the world.-Hong Kong:Vindicate 4 June and Relay the Torch is an annual activity mourning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 organised by Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic...
are held every year in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands people have attended the candlelight vigil.
Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide anti-communist revolt in the People's Republic of HungaryPeople's Republic of Hungary
The People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...
, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. The revolt began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
to the Parliament building
Hungarian Parliament Building
The Hungarian Parliament Building is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, one of Europe's oldest legislative buildings, a notable landmark of Hungary and a popular tourist destination of Budapest. It lies in Lajos Kossuth Square, on the bank of the Danube, in Budapest...
. A student delegation entering the radio building
Hungarian Radio
Magyar Rádió is Hungary's publicly funded radio broadcasting organization. It is also the country's official international broadcasting station...
in an attempt to broadcast its demands
Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956
On October 23, 1956, a group of Hungarian students compiled a list of sixteen points containing key national policy demands. Following an anti-Soviet protest march through the Hungarian capital of Budapest, the students attempted to enter the city's main broadcasting station to read their demands...
was detained. When the delegation's release was demanded by the demonstrators outside, they were fired upon by the State Security Police
State Protection Authority
The State Protection Authority was the secret police force of Hungary from 1945 until 1956. It was conceived of as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's secret police forces, but attained an indigenous reputation for brutality during a series of purges beginning in 1948, intensifying in 1949...
(ÁVH) from within the building. The news spread quickly and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital. The revolt spread quickly across Hungary
People's Republic of Hungary
The People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...
, and the government fell. After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...
changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution.
Indonesia
From 1965 to 1966, over a period of five months, an estimated 500,000 Communists were killed by the IndonesiaIndonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n government and allied militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
.
Japan
In 1948-1951, in the period of American occupation, a "red purge" occurred in JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, in which over 20,000 people accused of being Communists were purged from their places of employment.
People's Republic of China
The Chinese democracy movementChinese democracy movement
The Chinese democracy movement refers to a series of loosely organized political movements in the People's Republic of China against the continued one-party rule by the Communist Party. One such movement began during the Beijing Spring in 1978 and was taken up again in the Tiananmen Square...
is a loosely organized anti-communist movement in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. The movement began during Beijing Spring
Beijing Spring
The Beijing Spring refers to a brief period of political liberalization in the People's Republic of China which occurred in 1977 and 1978. The name is derived from "Prague Spring", an analogous event which occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968....
in 1978 and played an important role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
. The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion had some anti-communist leanings. In the 1990s, the movement underwent a decline both within China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and overseas, and is currently fragmented and not considered by most analysts to be a serious threat to power to the Communist Party's rule.
Charter 08
Charter 08
Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in...
is a manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
signed by over 303 Chinese intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
s and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activists to promote political reform and democratization
Chinese democracy movement
The Chinese democracy movement refers to a series of loosely organized political movements in the People's Republic of China against the continued one-party rule by the Communist Party. One such movement began during the Beijing Spring in 1978 and was taken up again in the Tiananmen Square...
in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
.
As a document of Chinese origin, it is unusual in calling for greater freedom of expression
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
and for free election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
s. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and its name is a reference to Charter 77
Charter 77
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...
, issued by dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s in Czechoslovakia.
Since its release, more than 8,100 people inside and outside of China have signed the charter.
Poland
Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
saw Poland as the bridge which the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
would have to cross in order to assist the other communist movements
Soviet Empire
During the Cold War, the informal term "Soviet Empire" referred to the Soviet Union's influence over a number of smaller nations who were nominally independent but subject to direct military force if they tried to leave the Soviet system; see Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring.Though...
and help bring about other European revolutions. Poland was the first country which successfully stopped a communist military advance. Between February 1919 and March 1921, Poland's successful defence of its independence was known as the Polish–Soviet War. According to American sociologist Alexander Gella, "the Polish victory had gained twenty years of independence not only for Poland, but at least for an entire central part of Europe."
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
was against the Soviets. The Czortków Uprising
Czortków Uprising
The Czortków Uprising was a failed attempt by anti-Soviet Poles, most of them teenagers from local high schools, to storm the local Red Army barracks and a prison, in order to release Polish soldiers kept there. It occurred during the night of January 21–22, 1940, in the Soviet-occupied...
occurred during January 21–22, 1940, in the Soviet-occupied Podolia
Podolia
The region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova, is also a part of Podolia...
. Teenagers from local high schools stormed the local Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
barracks and a prison, in order to release Polish soldiers who had been imprisoned there.
In the latter years of the war, there were increasing conflicts between Polish and Soviet partisans
Soviet partisans in Poland
Poland was annexed and partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the invasion of Poland in 1939. In the pre-war Polish territories annexed by the Soviets the first Soviet partisan groups were formed in 1941, soon after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet...
, and some groups continued to oppose the Soviets long after the war. Between 1944 and 1946, soldiers of the anti-communist armed groups, known as the cursed soldiers
Cursed soldiers
The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...
, made a series of attacks on communist prisons immediately following the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. The last of the cursed soldiers
Cursed soldiers
The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...
, members of the militant anti-communist resistance in Poland
Anti-communist resistance in Poland
Anti-communist resistance in Poland can be divided into two types: the armed partisan struggle, mostly led by former Armia Krajowa and Narodowe Siły Zbrojne soldiers, which ended in the late 1950s , and the non-violent, civil-resistance struggle that culminated in the creation and victory of the...
, was Józef Franczak
Józef Franczak
Józef Franczak was a soldier of the Polish Army, Armia Krajowa World War II resistance, and last of the cursed soldiers - members of the militant anti-communist resistance in Poland. He used codenames Lalek , Laluś, Laleczka, Guściowa, and fake name Józef Babiński...
, who was killed with a pistol in his hand by ZOMO
ZOMO
Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej , were paramilitary-police formations during the Communist Era, in the People's Republic of Poland...
in 1963.
Poznań 1956 protests
Poznan 1956 protests
The Poznań 1956 protests, also known as Poznań 1956 uprising or Poznań June , were the first of several massive protests of the Polish people against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland...
were massive anti-communist protests in the People's Republic of Poland
People's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
. Protesters were repressed by the regime.
The Polish 1970 protests
Polish 1970 protests
The Polish 1970 protests were protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and other everyday items...
were anti-Comintern protests which occurred in northern Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase in the prices of food and other everyday items. As a result of the riots, brutally put down by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia
Milicja Obywatelska
Milicja Obywatelska was a state police institution in the People's Republic of Poland. It was created in 1944 by Soviet-sponsored PKWN, effectively replacing the pre-war police force. In 1990 it was transformed back into Policja....
, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded.
Solidarity was an anti-communist trade union in a Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
country. In the 1980s, it constituted a broad anti-communist movement. The government attempted to destroy the union during the period of martial law in the early 1980s
Martial law in Poland
Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...
, and several years of repression, however, in the end, it had to start negotiating with the union. The Round Table Talks
Polish Round Table Agreement
The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from February 6 to April 4, 1989. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest.-History:...
between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August, a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed, and in December 1990, Wałęsa was elected President of Poland. Since then, it has become a more traditional trade union.
Romania
The Romanian anti-communist resistance movementRomanian anti-communist resistance movement
An armed resistance movement against the communist regime in Romania was active from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime...
lasted between 1948 and the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime. It was not until the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
in late 1989 that details about what was called “anti-communist armed resistance” were made public. It was only then that the public learned about the numerous small groups of "haiducs" who had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
, where some resisted for ten years against the troops of the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
. The last “haiduc” was killed in the mountains of Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
in 1962. The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movement in the former Soviet bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
.
The Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
was a week-long series of increasingly violent riots and fighting in late December 1989 that overthrew the Government of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
. After a trial, Ceauşescu and his wife Elena
Elena Ceausescu
Elena Ceaușescu was the wife of Romania's Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.-Background:She was born Elena Petrescu into a peasant family in Petrești commune, Dâmboviţa County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her family was supported by her father's job...
were executed. Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
was the only Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
country to overthrow its government violently or to execute its leaders.
Moldova
The Moldovan anti-communist social movement2009 Moldova civil unrest
The 2009 civil unrest in Moldova began on April 7, 2009, in major cities of Moldova before the results of the 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election were announced...
emerged on April 7, 2009, in major cities of Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
after the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) had allegedly rigged elections.
The anti-communists organized themselves using an online social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, hence its moniker used by the media, the Twitter Revolution or Grape revolution.
Serbia
SerbianSerbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
anti-Communist partisans fought during World War II, on the Yugoslav Front: nationalist and royalist paramilitary Chetniks
Chetniks
Chetniks, or the Chetnik movement , were Serbian nationalist and royalist paramilitary organizations from the first half of the 20th century. The Chetniks were formed as a Serbian resistance against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, and participated in the Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II...
conducted a guerilla war against much the stronger Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans, the latter heavily sponsored by the Allied powers
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
, in the last two years of war.
South America
During the 1970s, the right-wing military juntaMilitary junta
A junta or military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term derives from the Spanish language junta meaning committee, specifically a board of directors...
s of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
implemented Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
, a campaign of political repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
involving assassinations and other intelligence operations. The campaign was aimed at eradicating alleged communist and socialist influences in their respective countries, and control opposition against the government, which resulted in a large number of deaths. Participatory governments include Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, with limited support from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
United States
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
, led by Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer was Attorney General of the United States from 1919 to 1921. He was nicknamed The Fighting Quaker and he directed the controversial Palmer Raids.-Congressional career:...
. During the Red Scare, the Lusk Committee investigated those suspected of sedition, and many laws were passed in the US that sanctioned the firings of Communists. First came the Hatch Act of 1939
Hatch Act of 1939
The Hatch Act of 1939 is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit federal employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the President and the Vice President, from engaging in partisan political activity...
which was sponsored by Carl Hatch
Carl Hatch
Carl Atwood Hatch was a Democratic Party politician from New Mexico who represented the Land of Enchantment in the United States Senate from 1933 until 1949....
of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
. This law attempted to drive Communism out of public work places. The Hatch Act outlawed the hiring of federal workers who advocated the "overthrow of our Constitutional form of government". This phrase was specifically directed at the Communist Party. Later in the spring of 1941 another anti-communist law, Public Law 135, was passed. This law sanctioned the investigation of any federal worker suspected of being communist and the firing of any communist worker.
Following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the rise of the Soviet Union, many anti-communists in the United States feared that Communism would triumph throughout the entire world and eventually be a direct threat to the US government. This fear led to the domino theory
Domino theory
The domino theory was a reason for war during the 1950s to 1980s, promoted at times by the government of the United States, that speculated that if one state in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect...
, which stated that a Communist takeover in any nation could not be tolerated because it would lead to a chain reaction that would result in worldwide Communism. There were fears that powerful Communist states such as the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
were using their power to forcibly assimilate other countries into Communist rule. The Soviet Union's expansion into central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
after World War II was seen as evidence of this. The US policy of halting further Communist expansion came to be known as containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
. This period, up to 1957, is known as the Second Red Scare.
The deepening of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
in the 1950s saw a dramatic increase in anti-communism in the United States, including the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
. Thousands of Americans, such as the filmmaker Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, were accused of being Communists or sympathizers, and many became the subject of aggressive investigations by government committees such as the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result of sometimes vastly exaggerated accusations, many of the accused lost their jobs and became blacklisted, although most of these verdicts were later overturned. This was also the period of the McCarran Internal Security Act and the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
trial. After the collapse of the Soviet Union many records were made public that in fact verified that many of those thought to be falsely accused for political purposes were in fact Communist spies or sympathizers (see Venona Project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
).
During the 1980s, the Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
administration pursued an aggressive policy against the Soviet Union and its allies by building up weapons programs, including the Strategic Defense Initiative
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
. The Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
was implemented to reduce the influence of the Soviet Union worldwide by providing aid to anti-Soviet resistance movements, including the Contras
Contras
The contras is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing Nicaragua's FSLN Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's dictatorship...
in Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
and the Mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
s in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. The accidental downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island
Moneron Island
Moneron Island, is a Russian possession located off Sakhalin Island.-Description:Moneron has an area of about and a highest point of . It is approximately long by wide, and is located from Sakhalin's port of Nevelsk and about directly southwest of Sakhalin Island itself at the northeastern...
by the Soviets on Sept. 1, 1983 contributed to the anti-communism propaganda of the 1980s. KAL 007 had been carrying 269 people, including a sitting U.S. Congressman, Larry McDonald
Larry McDonald
Lawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat...
.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
era, Maoist
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
China, North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
, and the Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
-led Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
government and the pro-Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
People's Republic of Kampuchea
People's Republic of Kampuchea
The People's Republic of Kampuchea , , was founded in Cambodia by the Salvation Front, a group of Cambodian leftists dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge, after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government...
in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. Those states killed millions of their own people and continued to suppress civil liberties of the surviving population. During the 1980s, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine
Kirkpatrick Doctrine
The Kirkpatrick Doctrine was the doctrine expounded by United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick in the early 1980s based on her 1979 essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards". The doctrine was used to justify the U.S...
was particularly influential in American politics; it advocated US support of anti-communist governments around the world, including authoritarian regimes.
Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
Communist regimes in Europe between 1989 and 1991; the fear of a worldwide Communist takeover was no longer a serious concern. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in US foreign policy toward Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
. In the case of Cuba, the US continues to maintain economic sanctions
United States embargo against Cuba
The United States embargo against Cuba is a commercial, economic, and financial embargo partially imposed on Cuba in October 1960...
against the country. Tensions with North Korea have heightened as the result of reports that it is stockpiling nuclear weapons, and the assertion that it is willing to sell its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
technology to any group willing to pay a high enough price. Much of the US foreign policy establishment does not regard the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
as communist in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, there is some hostility toward the Chinese government, particularly among conservative Congressional Republicans. For example, national security issues were raised during Chinese state-owned CNOOC Ltd.'s takeover bid for Unocal, an American energy firm.
Vietnam
In VietnamVietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, anti-communist movements, including those from pro-democracy and pro-human rights groups, had largely been limited before the advent of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. This was due to repression of dissidents as well as the Vietnamese government's efforts in censorship and propaganda regarding foreign and domestic policies, including examination of personal mails (especially those sent from overseas), and a heavy censorship of foreign media broadcasts.
Prior to the arrival of the Internet, much of the global anti-communist activities directed towards Vietnam were religious in nature. Clerical North American and European organizations voiced concerns about religious oppressions. Of particular robustness were the organizations of Monsignor Tran Van Hoai, the first Director of the Vatican's Center of Pastoral Apostolate for Overseas Vietnamese.
In recent years, there have been many Vietnamese bloggers who, with the aid of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, have disseminated information critical of Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
and the Vietnamese government's relations with the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, the most controversial of which are deals struck between the two communist countries' leaders, such as territorial claims of islands in the South China Sea
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...
. These have sparked intense nationalism and led to much outrage felt even on the part of many Vietnamese themselves. The culmination of the sentiments can be seen in many recent protests held in both former North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
's capital Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
and former South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
's capital Saigon.
Frequent arrests of some democracy advocates by the government have also led to activism among many Vietnamese who demand an release of all political dissidents as well as greater clarity in their trials. Recently, there have also been protests against the government blocking access to free networking
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
and blogging services such as Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, Wordpress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
, as well as calls for a unified effort in boycotting government sanctioned blogging services like the so-called "Yahoo! Việt Nam 360plus".
See also
Anti-communists- Anti-Stalinist leftAnti-Stalinist leftThe anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule...
- The Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...
- Charter 08Charter 08Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in...
- Chinese democracy movementChinese democracy movementThe Chinese democracy movement refers to a series of loosely organized political movements in the People's Republic of China against the continued one-party rule by the Communist Party. One such movement began during the Beijing Spring in 1978 and was taken up again in the Tiananmen Square...
- Criticisms of communismCriticisms of communismCriticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories: those concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states, and those concerning themselves with communist principles and theory....
- Criticisms of Communist party ruleCriticisms of Communist party ruleCriticisms of communist party rule have been known since the first days of the first communist government in Soviet Russia, established after the October Revolution of 1917.-Background:...
- Criticisms of socialismCriticisms of socialismCriticism of socialism refers to a critique of socialist models of economic organization, their efficiency and feasibility; as well as the political and social implications of such a system. Some criticisms are not directed toward socialism as a system, but are directed toward the socialist...
- Criticisms of MarxismCriticisms of MarxismCriticisms of Marxism have come from the political left as well as the political right. Democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and a proletarian revolution. Many anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase...
- Mass killings under Communist regimesMass killings under Communist regimesMass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made...
- McCarthyismMcCarthyismMcCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
- RussophobiaRussophobiaRussophobia refers to a diverse spectrum of prejudices, dislikes or fears of Russia, Russians, or Russian culture. Its opposite is Russophilia....
- SinophobiaSinophobiaSinophobia or anti-Chinese sentiment is the fear of or dislike of China, its people, overseas Chinese, or Chinese Culture...
- Soviet dissidentsSoviet dissidentsSoviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union who disagreed with the policies and actions of their government and actively protested against these actions through either violent or non-violent means...
External links
- Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes
- Global Museum on Communism
- The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
- Museum of Communism
- The Black Book of Communism, by Stephane CourtoisStéphane CourtoisStéphane Courtois is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books...
- Russians In Support of the Idea of International Condemnation of Communism, an open Letter from Leaders of Russian Anti-Communist Organizations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe