Victims of Communism Memorial Day recognizes tens of millions murdered

Has your state formally recognized November 7 as Victims of Communism Memorial Day? Five US states (Alabama, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia) have done so, and eight more (Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) have plans to join them.

Why should we remember victims of communism on November 7? May 1—the day of the year on which communist governments have traditionally celebrated their ideology—might seem a better choice. However, to avoid competition with their well-known May Day celebrations, the general consensus has moved toward the anniversary of the date when the first communist regime was established.

On November 7, 1917, Red Guards took over the Winter Palace and ousted the Russian Provisional Government, giving Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks control of Russia. Communism subsequently spread to other countries throughout the twentieth century, from Eastern European nations such as Poland after World War II, to Asian nations such as Cambodia, and to African nations such as Angola.

Since the collapse of communist governments in many countries in the late twentieth century, there has been a movement to recognize the human damage done by the bloody political ideology. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, for example, is promoting this memorial date to encourage us to remember annually the men, women, and children who lived and died under communism. That foundation publicizes the stories of the real suffering endured by those who have lived under communism, and it seeks justice for those who are still living under communism. This is clearly not a problem of the past; as their website points out, “one-fifth of the world’s population still lives under single-party communist regimes in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam.”

According to The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard University Press, 1999), the number of people who died under communism is truly staggering. Based on unofficial totals, communism caused:

• 20 million deaths in the USSR
• 65 million deaths in China
• 1 million deaths in Vietnam
• 2 million deaths in North Korea
• 2 million deaths in Cambodia
• 1 million deaths in Eastern Europe
• 150,000 deaths in Latin America
• 1.7 million deaths in Africa
• 1.5 million deaths in Afghanistan
• 10,000 deaths internationally through the communist movement

These estimated deaths come from secular sources. It is not always possible to be certain about such totals, due to communist governments’ predilection for the use of massacres, killing fields, and prison camps. But it is widely believed that 100 million human beings have died under communism from that fateful day of November 7, 1917, to the present.

The secular world may keep track of communism’s victims; the Catholic Church keeps track of her martyrs. There is, in the month of November, no shortage of either.

The conflict known as the Spanish Civil War is not included in the grand tally of communism’s victims above, probably because that number generally doesn’t include victims of wars. The 286 Spanish men and women who were executed by communist sympathizers in the single month of November in 1936 are considered martyrs by the Church because they were killed out of hatred for their Catholic faith. This is easy to prove since most of these martyrs were priests, religious brothers, and religious sisters. However, this number also includes seven laymen who are remembered on November 6. Why were these seven men—two of whom were teenagers—targeted for their faith? Apparently, membership in the Association of the Miraculous Medal, a pious association of the laity which promotes devotion to the Blessed Mother and the wearing of her famous medal, was considered a crime worthy of death.

On November 5, 1950, Blessed Hryhoriy Lakota died a martyr in Russia. He was born in Ukraine and became a priest, as well as an auxiliary bishop of Przemyśl in Poland. When the USSR took control of Poland after World War II, communist leaders simply sent many Catholic leaders to prison camps to try to destroy the practice of the faith. Hryhoriy was one of those leaders. He died in Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp, a major gulag in the USSR, which housed common criminals, POWs, and other “enemies of the state”. Survivors of the camp later remembered Hryhoriy’s virtuous behavior, despite its brutal conditions. When Morris West wrote his novel The Shoes of the Fisherman, he modeled his main character, Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, after two men: Blessed Hryhoriy and Ukrainian bishop Josyf Slipyi.

On November 5, the Church remembers thirty-eight Catholics who were martyred in Albania during the many years that Christians endured repression under communists. Almost all of these martyrs, who died between 1945 and 1974, were Albanian priests. Many endured months of torture in prison before they were executed. Blessed Maria Tuci, the only woman in the group, was a schoolteacher and was twenty-two years old at the time of her death. After she refused the sexual advances of a member of the secret police, she was arrested and accused of the crime of teaching the catechism to her students. She refused to divulge information about other Catholics, even after being brutally tortured for over a year. The hospital workers who cared for Maria before her death remembered that she forgave her torturers and died holding her rosary.

November also marks the dates of the martyrdoms of three priests and two bishops from Eastern Europe. Blessed Vincent Eugene Bossilkov was a Passionist priest of Bulgaria and titular bishop who died a martyr on November 11, 1952. Blessed Peter (Kamen) Vitchev and two other priests of the Congregation of Augustinians of the Assumption were executed by firing squad and died as martyrs on November 13, 1952. Blessed Josaphat Kotsylovsky was a Basilian monk and bishop of Przemyśl, Poland, when he was subjected to a mock trial and sent to a prison camp near Kiev, Ukraine. Josaphat died on November 17, 1947, as a result of the conditions of the prison. All five of these men suffered imprisonment and death because communist leaders saw Catholic priests as their enemies in their efforts to control and inspire terror in their civilian populace.

The truth about life under communism is painful and often brutal. It is also virtually absent from most educational curricula. Why are we surprised that young people—and many college-educated adults—are unaware of the dangers of life under communism when they are never taught about those dangers? That’s why the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has developed an educational program about the ideology and history of communism, a program which includes both workshops for teachers and curriculum for middle school and high school students.

Whether your state formally recognizes the victims of communism on November 7 or not, think of these blesseds during the month of November. And ask them to help us find ways to teach our children the truth about the errors of communism, a truth which starts with an understanding of the dignity of every human life.

Catholic World Report