Via the WaPo
May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their regimes. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….
The main alternative to May 1 is November 7, the anniversary of the communist coup in Russia. However, choosing that date might be interpreted as focusing exclusively on the Soviet Union, while ignoring the equally horrendous communist mass murders in China, Cambodia, and elsewhere. So May 1 is the best choice.
Our relative neglect of communist crimes carries a real cost. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events have helped sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of extreme government control of the economy and civil society.
In this 2012 post, I explained why May 1 is a better date for Victims of Communism Day than the available alternatives, such as November 7 (the anniversary of the Bolshevik coup that led to the establishment of the first communist state) and August 23 (the anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact). However, as I emphasized in last year’s May Day post, I am more than willing to adopt a different date if it turns out to be easier to build a consensus around it than around May 1.
This year’s Victims of Communism post gains added relevance due to recent events in Russia and Ukraine. The ideology of Vladimir Putin’s regime is authoritarian nationalism, not communism, and its misdeeds are orders of magnitude smaller than those of the Soviet Union. The threat it poses to the West is likewise far smaller than that of its predecessor. Nevertheless, it is significant that Russia’s current ruler is a former KGB colonel, and a longtime apologist for communism who has called the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century. If a former Gestapo or SS colonel became chancellor of Germany and began repressing opposition media, persecuting gays and lesbians, annexing territories that Germany lost in World War II, and calling the fall of the Third Reich the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, there would be a great outcry even if the ex-Gestapo chancellor did not engage in mass murder and repression on the scale of the Nazis and was generally more cautious and less aggressive than Hitler.
Be that as it may, there are many good reasons to increase awareness of the crimes of communism, most of which go far beyond current events. Victims of Communism Day could help achieve that goal.