Communist Crimes: A Legal and Historical Study, by Wojciech Roszkowski
For professors, college students, and interested adults) This work, published by the Institute of National Remembrance, describes and categorizes the crimes of the communist authorities that were committed worldwide throughout the 20th century. Wojciech Roszkowski bases his work on numerous sources, including the hearings conducted by the Commission of the House of Representatives for Communist Aggression in the early 1950s. Chapter 1, “Legal and Political Background,” reviews the international laws violated by communist regimes, which consist of genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. In Chapter 2, “Ideological Roots,” Roszkowski examines how communist ideology proved to be an effective and persistent tool in changing the world’s political, social, and cultural landscape in the 20th century. In Chapter 3, “Early Communist Aggressions,” we see how the Soviet invasions of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romanian Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina closed the cycle of communist aggression that started in 1917 and continued until the breakdown of the German-Soviet occupation of the years 1939-1941. In Chapter 4, “The Communist Revolution Goes Worldwide,” we see the Sovietization of Eastern Europe together with China’s invasion of Tibet and the implementation of North Korea’s oppressive regime. It is apparent that communist military aggression was part of the strategy of the Soviet leadership to export the revolution worldwide. In Chapter 5, “From Theory to Practice,” Roszkowski examines the many ways in which the communist system destroyed people. According to the most widely cited estimate, the overall number of victims in the Soviet Union would be 69,911,000. There are also the deaths in communist China, North Korea, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and other countries. In Chapter 6, “Communism Against Religion,” we see that the general goal of communist regimes worldwide was to eliminate organized religion wherever possible and reduce its influence if elimination was initially impossible. The death of Stalin in 1953 marked the beginning of a new period in which Communism’s anti-religious offensive lost some of its momentum. It should be noted that only in Poland was the Roman Catholic church revived and restored. In Chapter 7, “Communism against Nationality,” Roszkowski explains that Communism has always claimed to be an internationalist ideology; however, when communist leaders face resistance to their revolutionary activities from certain nationalities or ethnic communities, they immediately declare them as “class enemies.” Finally, in Chapter 8, “Western Perspectives,” the author describes how communism was embraced by a number of Western European and Asian countries. Pro-Soviet activities continued in the Western world of intellectuals into the 1960s and 1970s. The false perceptions of communism by numerous and outstanding Western personalities may be called the Great Deception. It is noteworthy how many and how prominent the authors were who praised communism and how strongly their false statements were in shaping public opinion.
