We are recording interviews with people who directly experienced Communist rule. The core aim is to
This is a powerful depiction of what was called a "struggle session" during the Cultural Revolution in China. It should perhaps be more accurately called a "public torture session". It is from the "3 Body Problem" on Netflix.
Source - 3 Body Problem (2024 Netflix Series) Struggle sessions were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where peo...
On the centenary of his death, what do people think of Lenin?
Here are some highlights of the poll we commissioned by Whitestone Insight who interviewed 2068 GB adults online from 12th -14th January.
15% of young people (aged 18-24) have a favourable or very favourable view of Lenin
This is in contrast to only 3% of over 65s.
Excluding those who have not heard of Lenin and or who have no opinion about him, 43% of young people approve of Lenin.
Of so-called “influencers” – those who tweet frequently or who write to the newspapers or who are perceived to influence in other ways – 32 per cent take a favourable view of Lenin.
Among the population as a whole, 7% take a favourable view compared with 45% who take an unfavourable view.
On communism in general, 24% of young people have a favourable view compared with 4% of those over 65.
It is disturbing that so many young people have a favourable idea of Lenin and his work. One of the facts to emerge from the poll is that the longer people at university, the more likely they are to approve of Lenin. Which leads one to wonder what they are being taught.
Some key facts about Lenin: he created the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, which had licence to arrest, imprison, torture and kill without trial.
Lenin created the Gulag although it did not have that name. He established 107 concentration camps by the end of 1920.
Lenin set a fixed price for grain which became too low due to inflation. This led to a food shortage. He reacted by requisitioning grain from peasants at gunpoint. These policies contributed strongly to a terrible famine in 1920-21 in which at least 3 million people died.
Lenin blamed small farmers ("kulaks") for the famine and did not hesitate to order their murder.
Lenin’s order in relation to a revolt in Penza province: “Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than 100 known kulaks [peasants owning a little land], filthy rich men, bloodsuckers.”
There are many such orders that have been discovered. He ordered others, including Stalin, to be harsher and to kill.
Lenin initiated the Bolshevik coup d'etat in 1917 that began communist rule in the Soviet Union. Estimates of the death toll in the Soviet Union resulting from this are of the order of 20 million people.
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On the centenary of Lenin's death, here is an article by our director about how people see him. It is in the current edition of the Spectator.
Please not that the 3% of over 65s who approve of Lenin are a percentage of all over 65s including those who have not heard of him and those who did not give an opinion of him. The equivalent figure for 18-24 year-olds is 15%. On this basis, 18-24 year-olds are 5 times more likely to approve of Lenin than those over 65.
The centenary of Lenin's death is soon (January 21st). Doubtless there will be articles and maybe tv programmes about him. What should we think of him?
Free speech in the Soviet Union: an extract from a book Stalin banned and you can see why. It made clear in many places that people lived in fear of being denounced for saying something critical of the regime. From "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman, p273.
Marx called religion, "the o***m of the masses". Raymond Aron, a French intellectual, replied by naming one of his books, "The O***m of the Intellectuals" - referring to Marxism.
On this day in 1989, the words, "Down with Ceaucescu!" were first shouted by a crowd in the city of Timisoara. This was the beginning of the revolt that led to the overthrow of the communist dictatorship. See our short video:
A concise account of the Timisoara Uprising featuring unique testimony by three people who were first-hand witnesses and participants in the uprising. One of...
We were pleased to take part in this conference. One of the best things was learning about other organisations that work to spread knowledge about the history of totalitarian regimes.
It is wrong to think that Poland willingly accepted the communist rule imposed by the Soviet Union. A forgotten army fought for 19 years trying to resist it.
Escape from North Korea: one woman's extraordinary story of starvation, escape across the border into China, being sold to a man to be his unwilling "wife", bearing a son by him, being arrested and sent back to North Korea... Genuinely astonishing new video with introduction and then interview. We recommend that you turn on the closed captions (subtitles) marked CC.
Ji Hyun Park escaped twice from North Korea. James Bartholomew gives an introduction about North Korea and then interviews Ji Hyun about life in North Korea ...
We have just published a podcast version of our interview with Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans. It's called, "Even the grass was bourgeois".
Interview with Jung Chang, author of 'Wild Swans', about her own and her family's experience of communist rule in China.
The little-known story of how a group of Britons made trips to communist Eastern Europe, smuggling in books and doing all they could to support persecuted intellectuals. New article.
Life lessons from a Lithuanian nun, Sister Nijolė, who fought communism. Article by James Bartholomew originally published in The Spectator online on 14th November 2022.
Today is the anniversary of the day in 1946 when Musine Kokalari appeared in a show trial in Albania and, instead of pleading for mercy, declared, "I am not a Communist and this is not a crime". For this she spent most of the rest of her life in prison or internal exile.
Interview with June Chang, author of Wild Swans, about her own and her family's experience of communist rule in China. Jung Chang's book "Wild Swans" was an international best-seller with sales of over 13 million copies. In this interview, James Bartholomew asks her about her family's experience of the Cultural Revolution. Both her parents were tortured. She herself eventually got a scholarship and was able to travel to London. She describes how grass was pulled out of the ground because it was described by Chairman Mao as "bourgeois". Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halleday, wrote a revelatory biography of Mao. At the end of the interview, she struggles to find a way to describe Mao. She says "monster" and "tyrant" are used about many people. Implicitly, she believes that Mao was outstandingly evil.
https://youtu.be/IM3XmiJKVdg
Jung Chang, author of the international best-seller "Wild Swans", argues that it's hard to describe Mao in a single word. So she uses a sentence spoken by Mao himself.
This is a trailer for the full interview which will be published next week.
On this day in 1941, the Soviet Union began mass deportations from the Baltic States. In only one week, tens of thousands were deported, many of them to distant parts of the Soviet Union.
There were two main waves of deportations from the Baltic States: one in 1941 after the first Soviet occupation and another in 1949 following the second occupation.
It was an honour and pleasure to interview Jessica Douglas-Home last week. She was one of a group of individuals who took books into Communist Eastern Europe during the 1980s and gave talks on cultural subjects. We asked what motivated her. "Anger", she said.
It was anger at how people were being treated by the communist regimes. Philosophers were fired because they did not simply repeat the party line. Several had to work in menial jobs such as being boiler stokers. The one good thing about that was that it gave them time to read.
And it was better than being put in prison, which some of them were.
"England is heaven and North Korea is hell" - extract from an event with Ji Hyun Park who defected twice from North Korea. The whole event will be published on Youtube soon.
George Orwell's "1984" was extraordinarily powerful in communist Eastern Europe. One person we interviewed said the book stunned him when he read it because it described the world he was living in.
Excerpt from "Once Upon Another Time" by Jessica Douglas-Home, p42,
Vaclav Havel on communist government after "normalisation" -when out-and-out terror is no longer needed since everyone has become a kind of collaborator:
"It falsifies the past, it falsifies the present and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus."
Cited in "Once Upon Another Time" by Jessica Douglas-Home, p23.
The United Kingdom House of Commons has voted to to recognise Holodomor as a genocide. This is excellent news.
On this day in 1948, an extraordinarily brave man was shot in the back of the head in a prison in Warsaw.
On this day in 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. Mao endorsed the "May 16th notification" which stated that the Communist Party had been infiltrated by counter-revolutionaries. The most common estimates of the resulting deaths are between 750,000 and 2m.
This is an interview with Amei Li, who experienced the horror of those times. She is a smiling, charming woman living in Sydney, Australia. You would never guess what she has been through.
It is sometime said that the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB and other parts of the secret police in the Soviet Union were nothing more than a continuation of what the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, had done before. It is true that the Okhrana was a secret police with ruthless methods but it was on a very small scale compared with the Soviet secret police which followed. This is from Christopher Andrew's book, "The Sword and the Shield", p28.
This is the day when the Katyn Massacre is commemorated.
In February 1940, Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD, sent a memo to Stalin recommending the ex*****on of around 25,000 Polish prisoners. He wrote: "Based on the fact that all of them are steadfast incorrigible enemies. of Soviet power, the USSR NKVD deems it essential:
I. To propose that the USSR NKVD:
Give special consideration to… Imposing on them the sentence of capital punishment – ex*****on by shooting."
The recommendation was accepted and signed by Stalin, as shown in the original document which, decades later, was made available by the Russian State Archive. Stalin’s signature in blue is at the top.
From our brief on the Katyn Massacre: https://museumofcommunistterror.com/the-katyn-massacre/
In her introduction to the 2003 edition of "Wild Swans", Jung Chang suggests that the "Cultural Revolution" is misnamed and should be called "Mao's Great Purge".
David Hockney has a comment about communism in his new book, "Spring Cannot Be Cancelled".
We have just published a podcast version of Giles Udy's fascinating talk about how "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" came to be published. You can listen directly from the website or use the links to the podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean and Apple Podcasts.
https://museumofcommunistterror.com/one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich-how-it-came-to-be-published-podcast-version/
Two passages about Holodomor from the novel 'Everything Flows' by Vasiliy Grossman. He died in 1964 not knowing if the book would ever be published.
What really happened in the Cultural Revolution? The phrase sounds as if it could be benign or exciting. But what was it like to be right inside it? This is a zoom interview with Amei Li who was in the thick of it, at school at the time. A friend of hers became a Red Guard. She herself was defined as "Black". It is an extraordinary story.
The extraordinary experiences of Amei Li, her family and friends in the Cultural Revolution. - She was defined as "Black"- The Party Secretary at her school ...
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What was Lenin like?
The centenary of Lenin's death is soon (January 21st). Doubtless there will be articles and maybe tv programmes about him. What should we think of him?
Poland did not want to be communist
It is wrong to think that Poland willingly accepted the communist rule imposed by the Soviet Union. A forgotten army fought for 19 years trying to resist it.
https://youtu.be/IM3XmiJKVdg Jung Chang, author of the international best-seller "Wild Swans", argues that it's hard to describe Mao in a single word. So she uses a sentence spoken by Mao himself. This is a trailer for the full interview which will be published next week.
"England is heaven and North Korea is hell" - extract from an event with Ji Hyun Park who defected twice from North Korea. The whole event will be published on Youtube soon.
On this day in 1948, an extraordinarily brave man was shot in the back of the head in a prison in Warsaw.
On this day in 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. Mao endorsed the "May 16th notification" which stated that the Communist Party had been infiltrated by counter-revolutionaries. The most common estimates of the resulting deaths are between 750,000 and 2m. This is an interview with Amei Li, who experienced the horror of those times. She is a smiling, charming woman living in Sydney, Australia. You would never guess what she has been through.
Last week, in Kyev, the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, lit a candle in memory of Holodomor. It is welcome that this great historical tragedy is becoming better known.
Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Filmed inside the Stasi prison in Berlin, this video helps to explain why East Germans wanted to be liberated.
The exercise yards at the KGB prison in Vilnius which is part of the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights. Sister Nijole felt her fellow prisoners were depressed so sang a patriotic song to cheer them up. She was punished for this.
Two of the isolation cells in the KGB prison in Vilnius were particularly cruel: cold water on the floor and only a small, circular pedestal in the middle on which the prisoner had to stand to avoid the water. Apologies that the pedestal is barely visible in this clip.
Inside the KGB prison at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Today is the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. Tens of millions of people died in the reigns of terror or through starvation and untreated diseases. It is hard to grasp the suffering of so many so here is the story of just one brave man: Witold Pilecki.
Today is the day on which services will be held around the world to commemorate Holodomor, the famine in Ukraine enforced by Stalin and resulting in the deaths of nearly four million people.
Today there would normally be services of commemoration of the victims of the Stalin-enforced famine now known as Holodomor.
24 Hours Creating a New Day - Choral Art Acti
Albany Street
The Royal Air Force Museum London
Grahame Park Way
The Royal Air Force Museum - RAFM, RAF Museum
Grahame Park Way
