History, they say, is written by the victors, even the temporary ones. The dominance of counter-revolution and the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in the early 1990s was the trigger for the escalation of anti-communism at all levels.
Through bourgeois historiography and the mainstream media, a series of fallacious theories have been developed, aimed at slandering the 20th century socialism and demonizing Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Here are five of the most common anti-communist lies:
Myth 1: The Great Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine, also known as “The Holodomor”, was a man-made famine that was deliberately planned and engineered by the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin in order to punish the Ukrainian population and break their nationalist tendencies
The 1932-33 famine in Ukraine wasn't a premeditated, man-made famine caused by the Soviet government. Being a fabrication of the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators who emigrated to the U.S and Canada, the theory of the “deliberate man-made famine” was adopted in the post-war years by American and Western European imperialism within the context of its anti-communist crusade against the Soviet Union and the socialist countries. A fake report published on “Chicago American”, a news outlet owned by pro-Nazi U.S. magnate William Randolph Hearst, contributed significantly to the spread of the fabrication in the West. This perception has been refuted following decades of independent scientific research by bourgeois – not communist or communist-friendly by any means – scholars.
So, what led to the famine? Three are the major reasons: a) The extremely intense climate conditions of that period throughout the USSR; b) The extensive counterrevolutionary activities (e.g. sabotages) of the Kulaks and other reactionary elements s a response to the policy of Collectivization; c) The economic situation that arised from the painful, but necessary, process of the Collectivization.
Eyewitness accounts, like those of British-American journalist Walter Duranty, British author and historian Herbert George Wells, French Prime Minister Eduard Eryo and American journalist and author Anna Louis Strong, have clearly rejected the “man-made famine” lie.
Myth 2: The 1940 Katyn Massacre was carried out by the Soviets on the orders of Stalin
The murder of more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war in April-May 1940, known as the “Katyn Forrest Massacre”, was actually a crime carried out by the Nazis. In 1943, on the initiative of the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, the Germans publicly blamed the Soviet Union - the NKVD in particular-0 as the perpetrators of the massacre. Consequently, the fabrication was taken up by the whole capitalist world during the Cold War and remains until today one of the favorite topics of anti-communist mythology. In his personal diary, Dr Goebbels himself wrote: “I gave instructions that the widest possible use should be made of this propaganda material. It will keep us going for a couple of weeks” (14/4/1943) and “Unfortunately German munitions were found in the graves of Katyn.... In any case it is essential that this incident be kept top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped” (8/5/1943).
The “Soviets did it” version is mainly based on “archival material” allegedly found during the peak of the counterrevolutionary attack which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In fact, it was President Boris Yeltsin, first leader of the Russian Federation and a notorious anti-communist, who publicly and officially “admitted” Soviet guilt. Nonetheless, the so-called “soviet documents”, which supposedly show NKVD as the perpetrator of the massacre, are full of historical inconsistencies and mistakes. E.g: One of these so-called official “soviet documents”, allegedly an order of the Politburo to execute the Poles, bears the signature “Communist Party of the Soviet Union” (CPSU) which didn't exist until 1952! In 1940, the Party's name was “All-Union Communist Party-Bolshevik” (AUCP-B).
Additionally, a series of evidence found in the mass graves debunk the “Soviets did it” myth (German ammunition found in the graves, bullets produced only in Nazi Germany, victims had been tied with a white braided cord which had been produced outside the USSR, etc).
Recently, the Smolensk Region's office of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) declassified several archival documents exposing crimes committed by the Nazis in the Smolensk Region during the Second World War, including evidence concerning the execution of Poles and Nazi Germany's falsification of the Katyn case.
Myth 3: Stalin's Soviet Union allied with Hitler by signining the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
In it's hideously unscientific and unhistorical effort to equate Communism with Nazism, the bourgeois propaganda presents the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as a medium of expansive policy by the USSR and Hitler's Germany. But, did Stalin actually ally himself with Hitler? Here is the truth in a nutshell:
1) A whole year before the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, on 30 September 1938, the leaders of Great Britain, France, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed the Munich Agreement. This shameful agreement was an act of appeasement towards the Germans which led to the annexation of Czechoslovakia and the intensification of Nazi expansionism.
2) Despite having signed bilateral agreements of mutual aid with Poland, Great Britain and France did nothing when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
3) The “western allies” declined all proposals of the Soviet Union for the formation of a defense pact against Hitler. E.g: In March 1938, six months before the Munich Agreement, the USSR proposed an international conference which would deal with the confrontation of Nazi aggression. Before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, on July 23, 1939, the Soviet Union proposed to Britain and France negotiations for the formation of a defense plan in case of a German attack. Nonetheless, the British government prefered to secretly negotiate a non-aggression pact with Hitler's representatives in London!
4 ) The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was a necessary diplomatic maneuver by the Soviet Union, in order to gain time and prepare effectively for a full-scale war, while “western allies” had declined Soviet calls for the formation of an anti-Nazi front. Western bourgeois historians and journalists (e.g. Foster Rhea Dulles, William L. Shirer) admit that the the Soviet policy was realistic and necessary, given the then circumstances and the danger of a German attack.
5 ) The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact did not include any “Secret Protocol” for the partition of Poland. On the contrary, the 1938 Munich Agreement actually led to the partition of Czechoslovakia, as it happened. Poland had participated actively in the allied imperialist attack launched against the newly-founded Soviet state in 1918. With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, the Bolshevik leadership renounced tsarist claims to Poland. From its side, the Polish government kept under its control a number of areas in the Baltic region, including western Belarus, western Ukraine and a part of Lithuania. After the 1939 Nazi invasion in Poland, the Red Army moved towards the Soviet-Polish borders and liberated the above-mentioned regions.
Conslusion: No, the Soviet Union did not ally with Nazi Germany. Instead, it was the western capitalist powers, namely the UK and France, which tried to turn Hitler against the Soviets. The words of U.S President and notorious war criminal Harry Truman in 1941 are revealing: “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible...”.
Myth 4: Communism didn't work and collapsed
First things first: We don't expect anti-communists to learn the basics of Marxism, but those who repeat the above propagandistic lie must learn, at least, to distinguish communism from its first stage, socialism. The construction of socialism in the Soviet Union and the other countries marked the first attempt of the working class to create the new communist society, a society without exploitation of man by man.
The history of mankind is characterized by the succession of socio-economic systems, from primitive communalism to slavery and from feudalism to capitalism. All these systems weren't established once and for all but, on the contrary, it took centuries for them to prevail. Therefore, like feudal society, capitalism isn't eternal nor it marks the end of historic process.
The claim that “socialism/communism didn't work” is a total lie. Despite its existed problems and weaknesses, the socialist system of the 20th century proved its superiority over capitalism in almost all aspects: From workers' achievements to women's rights and from public healthcare and education to science, socialism showed its major advantages. The abolition of the capitalist relations in production liberated man from the shackles of wages slavery, thus paving the way for the production and development of sciences, not for the profits of the few, but for the satisfaction of the people's needs.
Socialism didn't “collapse” because it “didn't work”. There are several reasons which contributed to the prevalence of counterrevolution and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. A major mistake was the attempt of the Soviet leadership to “cure” certain problems appeared in socialist economy with capitalist methods (e.g. market reforms, weakening of central planning, etc). What began with the opportunist turn in the 20th CPSU Congress in 1956 was finished with the so-called “Perestroika” in the1980s.
All these who claim that “socialism didn't work”, that “communism is a failed utopia”, etc, must answer the following: If what they say is correct, then why do they continue fighting the idea of socialism-communism? If “communism has no future” then why bourgeois powers and institutions continue spending billions in anti-communist propaganda? They do it because they know very well that history did not end in 1991. They are fully aware that capitalism, with its anarchist nature in production and deification of profit, has nothing more to offer to humanity except from poverty, misery, unemployment, inequalities and imperialist wars.
Myth 5: Communism killed 100 million people
The most ridiculous and inacurate claim in the history of mankind. Even the most creative scriptwriter of Sci-Fi movies couldn't think of such a fallacy. The major source of this claim is the infamous “Black Book of Communism”, a totally unreliable, unscientific work published in 1997, edited by French historian Stephan Courtois. According to the book, the victims of “communist regimes” in the 20th century are estimated between 85 and 100 million people!!!
In order to arrive to the desired number of 100 million dead, Courtois and his colleagues blame “communism” even for deaths deriving from all sorts of natural disasters, including famines and pandemics!! There is not the slightest scientific-based evidence for the claims of the “Black Book of Communism”. The same applies for the monstrous allegations by notorious anti-communists, like British historian and MI-6 agent Robert Conquest and fascist Russian writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.
The whole goebbels-inspired argument about the supposed millions of “victims of communism” aims at disorienting the public discussion from the daily crimes of capitalism against humanity. Actually, how many generations of people have been died, killed or murdered due to capitalist exploitation, colonialism and imperialist wars since the French Revolution?
Check out for more:
Douglas Tottle (1987), Fraud, Famine and Fascism, The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard, Progress Books, Toronto
- Grover Furr (2014), Blood Lies, Red Star Publishers.
- Mark Tauger's “Modernization in Soviet Agriculture” (2006); “Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivization” (2006); and “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” (2005).
Grover Furr (2018), The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre. The Evidence. The Solution. Erythros Press & Media.
- Grover Furr. The “Official” Version of the Katyn Massacre Disproven?: Discoveries at a German Mass Murder Site in Ukraine, 8 Απριλίου 2013, «Socialism and Democracy», Vol. 27, No.2, σελ. 96-129: http://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.795268.
- Katyn: New Facts and Evidence
Foster Rhea Dulles (1944), The road to Tehran: The Story of Russia and America, 1781-1943, Princeton University Press
William L. Shirer (2011), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Simon & Schuster
Nikos Mottas, Stalin never allied with Hitler: The Truth about the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: http://www.idcommunism.com/2022/08/stalin-never-allied-with-hitler-truth-about-the-1939-molotov-ribbentrop-pact.html
18th Congress of the KKE: Resolution on Socialism. Assessments and conclusions on socialist construction during the 20th century, focusing on the USSR. KKE’s perception on socialism: https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/18th-Congress-Resolution-on-Socialism/
Nikos Mottas, Why Socialism is superior to Capitalism- The achievements of Socialist construction in the Soviet Union: https://www.idcommunism.com/2016/09/why-socialism-is-superior-to-capitalism.html
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
