Captive Nations Week, a week aimed at raising public awareness of the oppression of nations

Captive Nations

"Captive Nations" is a term sometimes used in the United States to describe nations under undemocratic regimes. During the Cold War, when the phraseology appeared and was more frequently used, it referred to nations under Communist domination, primarily Soviet rule.As a part of the United States’...

 under the control of Communist and other non-democratic governments, began in 1953 and was declared by a Congressional resolution and signed into law (Public Law 86-90) by President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

 in 1959. President Eisenhower, and every successive U.S. President up to the administration of President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

, has declared the third week of July to be Captive Nations Week.

The American foreign policy expert George Kennan

George F. Kennan

George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...

, serving at the time as ambassador to Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, sought unsuccessfully to dissuade President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 from proclaiming the week on the ground that the United States had no reason to make the resolution, which in effect called for the overthrow of all the governments of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

, a part of public policy.