Communist Regimes of Lies and Terror Failed Spectacularly at Everything

One of the lynchpins of the communist philosophy is the dictatorship of the proletariat. This ruthless approach involves snitching on the entire population, terror, brute force, and unimaginable violence. Lenin used these methods amply to force the dictatorship of the proletariat on the Soviet subjects.

The hapless citizens did not understand in the beginning that the dictatorship of the proletariat was actually the dictatorship of the Communist party and eventually of the dictatorship of the one person who was the most influential and ruthless, and was able to kill most of his enemies in order to claim a clear victory. He eliminated all domestic opposition and any threat from within.

Stalin and other dictators relied entirely on oppression, fear, and terror, and developed the infamous cult of personality – the forced worshipping of the dear leader.

Nikita S. Khrushchev waited three years after Stalin’s death to charge him in 1956 as “a murderer and a pathological liar who dealt in mass terror” during his 20 years of dictatorship.

“Terror and lies are the trademarks of communist tyranny,” but why did Khrushchev wait three years to reveal the abuses of power and the lies used to cover up the brutality, violence, contempt for human life, lack of freedom, and absolute intolerance? He knew about all of the atrocities committed but he remained silent because he was heavily implicated himself.

Many people in all Soviet satellite countries starved to death because the regimes used the Soviet model to industrialize their respective countries quickly by massive grain exports, leaving the population to starve. Communists did not care that people died as long as they were able to finance the importation of technology and machinery in order to develop the heavy industry.

Attacking the sources of food, Stalin ordered in 1929 “the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.” It was not just a war against them, but a war against all peasants, the very people who produced grains and raised cattle.

Who were the kulaks? They represented one tenth of the peasant population. Kulaks had eight acres of land, four cows., two horses, and were considered by Marxist-Leninists class enemies of the poorer peasants. The kulaks were to be deported. If they refused, brute force was used.

Marxist activists (apparatchiks) were ordered to confiscate privately owned farms which were then lumped together to make collective farms (kolkhoz). Within a five months period, half of the peasants were forcibly collectivized. Many peasants resisted by slaughtering their animals – cattle and horses by the tens of thousands were killed.

The opposition resulted in famine in 1932 and 1933. The remaining food was confiscated from the rural population and distributed to the workers in cities. Millions died as a result of this man-made famine. The Soviet Union did not even acknowledge the existence of this famine.

Peasants in other Soviet satellite countries were forced into collectivization by communists who confiscated their private arable land. They left the peasants just enough land for a home foundation and space for a small garden and a narrow yard between neighbors. Collective farms were formed by brute force and the former farmers were pressed into working for meager pay and a share of the eventual crop profits after the communists took their lion’s share from these profits. The field work was back breaking, the labor quotas of the Five Year Plans impossible to achieve, and the rewards minimal. It was the same slogan as in factories, “we pretend to work, and they [the communists] pretend to pay us.”

It was not just the peasants who were oppressed. The urban workers were forced to work for inadequate pay, in harsh conditions, no OSHA-type protections, many died in industrial accidents, and were forced to work night shifts with unrealistic production quotas, a technique that was used for many decades in Communist countries. Workers could find themselves unemployable and unable to find a place to live even if they had as little as “one day’s unjustified absence from work.” You were not allowed to be sick or miss work for any reason.

In a move to control the proletariat even more, workers were forced since 1932 to carry an identity card issued by the police which listed his/her employment date and place, a way to control their every movement and keeping them on the job and in the respective area. They needed permission to be absent and a doctor’s written excuse if they were sick.

Slave-labor camps (gulags), filled with political dissidents and other innocents, helped build the communist empire for free. Under communism, the accused were guilty until proven innocent. They were never paid for their work.  Not only were people imprisoned for their political views, but their families were punished as well, evicted from their meager apartments, dilapidated homes, and even schools.

Next time the young Americans who responded in surveys that they prefer socialism over capitalism, should read more about the actual economic and social conditions under all of the socialist republics of the Communist Party that failed spectacularly.