Victims of Communism Memorial
Encyclopedia
The Victims of Communism Memorial is a memorial
in Washington, D.C.
located at the intersection of Massachusetts
and New Jersey Avenues and G Street, NW, two blocks from Union Station
and within view of the U.S. Capitol
. The chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is Lee Edwards
.
According to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
, the intended purpose of the memorial is "that the history of communist tyranny will be taught to future generations."
The Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated by President
George W. Bush
on June 12, 2007, the 20th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan
's "tear down this wall
" speech in front of the Berlin Wall
.
Dana Rohrabacher
and Tom Lantos
and Senators
Claiborne Pell
and Jesse Helms
, to authorize the memorial passed unanimously on December 17, 1993 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton
, becoming Public Law 103-199 Section 905. Because of delays in establishing the memorial, the authorization was subsequently extended through Section 326 of Public Law 105-277, approved October 21, 1998, until December 17, 2007. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has the duty of funding and directing the first stages of planning the memorial.
In November 2005, the National Capital Planning Commission
gave approval to the monument's design. After raising over US$
825,000 for construction and maintenance costs, the groundbreaking ceremony was held September 27, 2006.
On June 12, 2007, the memorial was officially dedicated. Among the hundreds of invited guests were people from many countries who suffered certain hardships under Communist regimes
, such as Vietnamese
poet Nguyen Chi Thien
, Chinese
political prisoner
Harry Wu
, Lithuania
n anti-communist
journalist Nijolė Sadūnaitė and others. During the opening ceremony, President George W. Bush named some of those who suffered from Communism in anonymity:
President Bush also said, "We'll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism's unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever. We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory." Bush equated communism
to the threat of terrorism
then facing America: "Like the Communists, the terrorists
and radicals
who have attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian
aims."
On the first anniversary, there was another ceremony by the International Committee for Crimea. On June 9, 2011, a second comemmoration ceremony was held with representatives of ethnic and religious groups who suffered under communist regimes.
The Memorial features a 10-foot (3 m) bronze replica from photographs, of the Goddess of Democracy
, erected by students during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
. The monument's design and the statue are works of sculptor Thomas Marsh.
He led a project in 1994, to re-create the Goddess of Democracy in Chinatown, San Francisco.
The inscription reads:
(front)
(rear)
The Chicago Tribune
reported the statue drew criticism from the Chinese
embassy because the memorial evokes the Tiananmen Square protests
. The embassy called its construction an "attempt to defame China." The chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Lee Edwards, said he was not aware of any official complaint.
In response to criticism of China at the dedication ceremony, a Chinese foreign ministry speaker accused the US of pushing a "Cold War" thought and meddling in China's internal affairs, and issued a formal protest.
Memorial
A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains, and even entire parks....
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
located at the intersection of Massachusetts
Massachusetts Avenue (Washington, D.C.)
Massachusetts Avenue is a major diagonal transverse road in Washington, D.C., and the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District is a historic district that includes part of it....
and New Jersey Avenues and G Street, NW, two blocks from Union Station
Union Station (Washington, D.C.)
Washington Union Station is a train station and leisure destination visited by 32 million people each year in the center of Washington, D.C. The train station is served by Amtrak, MARC and Virginia Railway Express commuter rail services as well as by Washington Metro subway trains and local buses...
and within view of the U.S. Capitol
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
. The chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is Lee Edwards
Lee Edwards
Lee Edwards is a distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation...
.
According to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is a non-profit educational organization in the United States, established as a result of an Act of Congress in 1993 with the purpose to commemorate "the deaths of over 100,000,000 victims in an unprecedented imperial communist holocaust"...
, the intended purpose of the memorial is "that the history of communist tyranny will be taught to future generations."
The Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
on June 12, 2007, the 20th anniversary of President 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....
's "tear down this wall
Tear down this wall
"Tear down this wall!" was the challenge from United States President Ronald Reagan to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the Berlin Wall....
" speech in front of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
.
Background
A bill, H.R. 3000, sponsored by RepresentativesUnited States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Dana Rohrabacher
Dana Rohrabacher
Dana Tyron Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 45th and 42nd, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Republican Party...
and Tom Lantos
Tom Lantos
Thomas Peter "Tom" Lantos was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of southwest San Francisco...
and Senators
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Claiborne Pell
Claiborne Pell
Claiborne de Borda Pell was a United States Senator from Rhode Island, serving six terms from 1961 to 1997, and was best known as the sponsor of the Pell Grant, which provides financial aid funding to U.S. college students. A Democrat, he was that state's longest serving senator.-Early years:Pell...
and Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
, to authorize the memorial passed unanimously on December 17, 1993 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, becoming Public Law 103-199 Section 905. Because of delays in establishing the memorial, the authorization was subsequently extended through Section 326 of Public Law 105-277, approved October 21, 1998, until December 17, 2007. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has the duty of funding and directing the first stages of planning the memorial.
In November 2005, the National Capital Planning Commission
National Capital Planning Commission
The National Capital Planning Commission is a U.S. government agency that provides planning guidance for Washington, D.C. and the surrounding National Capital Region...
gave approval to the monument's design. After raising over US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
825,000 for construction and maintenance costs, the groundbreaking ceremony was held September 27, 2006.
Dedication ceremony
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
, such as Vietnamese
Vietnamese people
The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...
poet Nguyen Chi Thien
Nguyen Chi Thien
Nguyễn Chí Thiện, born in 1939 in Hanoi, Vietnam, is a dissident poet who spent a total of twenty-seven years in prison.- Biography :Thien was educated in private academies and was a supporter of Viet Minh revolutionaries in his early life...
, Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
Harry Wu
Harry Wu
Harry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n 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:...
journalist Nijolė Sadūnaitė and others. During the opening ceremony, President George W. Bush named some of those who suffered from Communism in anonymity:
They include innocent UkrainiansUkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
starved to death in StalinJoseph StalinJoseph 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...
's Great FamineHolodomorThe Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
; or RussiansRussiansThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
killed in Stalin's purgesGreat PurgeThe Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
; LithuaniansLithuaniansLithuanians are the Baltic ethnic group native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,765,600 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their native language...
and LatviansLatviansLatvians or Letts are the indigenous Baltic people of Latvia.-History:Latvians occasionally refer to themselves by the ancient name of Latvji, which may have originated from the word Latve which is a name of the river that presumably flowed through what is now eastern Latvia...
and EstoniansEstoniansEstonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. They speak a Finnic language known as Estonian...
loaded onto cattle cars and deportedPopulation transfer in the Soviet UnionPopulation transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
to Arctic death campsKolymaThe Kolyma region is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south...
of Soviet Communism. They include ChineseChinese peopleThe term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
killed in the Great Leap ForwardGreat Leap ForwardThe Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
and the Cultural RevolutionCultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
; Cambodians slain in Pol PotPol PotSaloth 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....
's Killing FieldsThe Killing FieldsThe Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War ....
; East GermansGerman Democratic RepublicThe German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
shot attempting to scale the Berlin WallBerlin WallThe Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
in order to make it to freedom; PolesPolesthumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
massacred in the Katyn Forest; and EthiopiaEthiopiaEthiopia , 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...
ns slaughtered in the "Red TerrorRed Terror (Ethiopia)The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir , was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia that most visibly took place once Communist Mengistu Haile Mariam achieved control of the Derg, the military junta, 3 February 1977...
"; Miskito Indians murdered by NicaraguaNicaraguaNicaragua 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...
's Sandinista dictatorship; and CubanCubansCubans or Cuban people are the inhabitants or citizens of Cuba. Cuba is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.
President Bush also said, "We'll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism's unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever. We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory." Bush equated communism
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...
to the threat of terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
then facing America: "Like the Communists, the terrorists
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
and radicals
Islamic extremism
Islamic extremism refers to two related and partially overlapping but also distinct aspects of extremist interpretations and pursuits of Islamic ideology:...
who have attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian
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...
aims."
On the first anniversary, there was another ceremony by the International Committee for Crimea. On June 9, 2011, a second comemmoration ceremony was held with representatives of ethnic and religious groups who suffered under communist regimes.
Critical reaction
Goddess of Democracy
The Goddess of Democracy , and the Goddess of Liberty , was a 10-meter-tall statue created during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The statue was constructed in only four days out of foam and papier-mâché over a metal armature...
, erected by students during 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 monument's design and the statue are works of sculptor Thomas Marsh.
He led a project in 1994, to re-create the Goddess of Democracy in Chinatown, San Francisco.
The inscription reads:
(front)
To the more than one hundred million victims of communism and to those who love liberty
(rear)
To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples
The Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
reported the statue drew criticism from the Chinese
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...
embassy because the memorial evokes the Tiananmen Square protests
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 embassy called its construction an "attempt to defame China." The chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Lee Edwards, said he was not aware of any official complaint.
In response to criticism of China at the dedication ceremony, a Chinese foreign ministry speaker accused the US of pushing a "Cold War" thought and meddling in China's internal affairs, and issued a formal protest.
See also
- Anti-communismAnti-communismAnti-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:...
- Cold WarCold WarThe 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...
- Communist terrorismCommunist terrorismCommunist terrorism are actions carried out by groups which adhere to a Marxist-Leninist or Maoist ideology which have been described as terrorism. State actions carried out by the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, North Korea and the actions of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia have all been...
- 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:...
- Great Leap ForwardGreat Leap ForwardThe Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
- Great PurgeGreat PurgeThe Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
- GulagGulagThe 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...
- History of communismHistory of communismThe history of the political ideology of communism hypothetically stretches all the way from the Palaeolithic up until the present day. However, most modern forms of communism are based upon Marxism, a variant of the ideology formed by the sociologist Karl Marx in the 1840s...
- 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...
- Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the ResistanceMemorial of the Victims of Communism and of the ResistanceThe Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance in Romania consists of the Sighet Museum and the International Centre for Studies into Communism.-International Centre for Studies into Communism:...
- Museum of Soviet occupationMuseum of Soviet occupationMuseum of Soviet occupation may refer to:*Museum of Soviet Occupation, Kiev*Museum of Soviet Occupation *Museum of Occupation of Latvia*Museum of Occupations *Museum of Occupation *Museum of Victims of Communism...
- Red TerrorRed TerrorThe Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...
- Reeducation campReeducation campReeducation camp is the official title given to the prison camps operated by the government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In such "reeducation camps", the government imprisoned several hundred thousand former military officers and government workers from the former regime of...
External links
- Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
- VOCMF Global Museum on Communism
- Quin Hillyer, "The Victims of Communism Memorial", The American SpectatorThe American SpectatorThe American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
, June 8, 2007 - Philip Kennicott, "The Meaning of a Marker For 100 Million Victims", The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, June 13, 2007 - Bill Van Auken, "Bush, Democrats resurrect anticommunism in service of US “war on terror”", World Socialist Website, June 24, 2007
- Thomas Marsh website