It goes without saying: the first half of the 20th century witnessed the greatest atrocities in human history. And as horrific as WWI (1914-1919) was, it would pale in comparison to what was brewing in Russia in 1917. Half way through WWI, Czarist Russia found itself at a tipping point. Faced with a rising call for democracy in Russia, Czar Nicholas voluntarily stepped down as Russia’s divinely-appointed autocrat in February 1917, and agreed that a provisional, democratic government be set up to usher Russia into a new phase of its history. As soon as that happened, thousands of exiled Russians came back home to take part in this momentous change to imperialist Russia.
Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin were among the returning exiles. These men, along with the Bolshevik party of which they were a part, had no interest in helping to form a western democracy in Russia. After all, being ardent Marxists, they equated anything “western” with “capitalism,” and thus saw it as the enemy of the inevitable, rising Proletariat revolution that would usher in a Marxist utopia—a classless society.
Contempt for the Proletariat, and the Impulse to Rule Them
It should be noted that Lenin himself, in fact, was not a member of the working-class proletariat—he was actually part of the landed nobility “who received the very best of educations and who never had to earn a living” (Wiker, Ten Books That Screwed Up the World, 115). This shouldn’t really be surprising, for Marx hardly worked a day in his life, and he sponged off the profits of textile business of his friend, Frederick Engels—yes, Engels basically was a capitalist who devoted his life to destroying capitalism.
The bitter irony of all this is that Lenin, like Marx and Engels before him, although he was a staunch advocate for communism and the overthrow of capitalist society, was in fact a beneficiary of the system he demonized—sort of like that rich trust-fund baby, using his wealth to overthrow the whole system of trust funds (of course, as always in Communist societies, other people’s trust funds, not their own)!
In any case, once Lenin returned to Russia, he quickly went about promoting his Bolshevik party, whipping people up into a frenzy, and plotting a way to essentially overthrow the original revolution itself. We should be quite clear: wherever it has taken root, Communism has overthrown democracies. Lenin succeeded in October 1917, when his Bolshevik party stormed into the provisional government headquarters, and forcibly took the reins of power—and thus gave birth to the Soviet Union, possibly the most repressive, inhumane regimes in human history.
But how did Lenin get his particular worldview out there? He wrote a book, The State and Revolution, in which he outlined his vision of the implementation of Marxist theory. Simply put, Lenin wrote (as did Marx before him) that violent revolution was inevitable—the only way the oppressed proletariat class could be freed was through the cataclysmic destruction of capitalistic, state power. What was to rise from the ashes was to be a dictatorship—the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Lenin figured that since capitalistic/state power was so pervasive, and since its destruction would have to be so complete, it should only be expected that civilization would be in ruins after the revolution. And since civilization would be in ruins, it would be impossible to have a thriving, socialistic democracy right away. No—what would be needed would be an elite class of intellectuals (i.e. Lenin and his Bolshevik cronies) to rearrange society according to Marxist doctrine (i.e. what they called “science”), and to crush the remaining vestiges of capitalism. As Wiker states in his book, Ten Books that Screwed Up the World:
‘The proletariat needs state power, the centralized organization of force, the organization of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population—the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians—in the work of organizing socialist economy’” (125).
After all, we couldn’t expect the actual working proletariat to be able to rearrange society—they were uneducated! Instead, what was needed was a temporary dictatorship of intellectual elites who would create a utopia for the newly classes society. (In this respect, Lenin shared the same contempt for the actual worker as Karl Marx had shown). In fact, as Wiker tells us, “…the Bolsheviks (most of whom were revolutionary academics like Lenin) decided that missing work or merely showing up late was cause for being shot or being given a ticket to Siberia. Such was the life of the happy ‘organized’ proletariat” (124).
Once the Communist system was set up, there would be no need for a dictatorship, or any state government for that matter. The temporary dictatorship of the Proletariat would just melt away, and Marx’s utopian Communist dream would be realized.
It goes without saying that Marx’s Communist dream ended up being at utter nightmare for millions upon millions of people. Despite the claims that “one day” there would be peace, prosperity, and happiness for all—if only you let the Bolsheviks do what needs to be done—that “one day” never came. Dictatorships never voluntarily give up power. In fact, most dictatorships become dictatorships through brute force and naked power. Lenin was no different. In October of 1917, a mere eight months after the establishment of a provisional, democratic government after the resignation of Czar Nicholas, Lenin and his Bolsheviks burst into government headquarters and seized the reigns of state power by force, just as Lenin said had to be done in The State and Revolution. Thus began the utter genocide that was the Soviet Union.
The “Scientific” Lie of Communism
To be clear, Communism is fundamentally an atheistic worldview that views economics as the driving shaper of society, religion as the “opiate of the people” (i.e. the “drug” that kings and capitalists give the poor to make them feel better) that needed to be annihilated, science as the way to “build a better society and state,” and the collective state as the only thing that really mattered. And since everything in the USSR was done “for the good of the state,” everything—even the more horrible acts of inhumanity—could be justified. For example, starving 8 million Ukrainians over the course the winter of 1937-1938? Had to be done—it was for the good of the state. And what about the genocide of countless millions of people? Had to be done—they were infected with religion and capitalism.
Lenin had one goal: destroy every vestige of capitalism. And that didn’t mean just the economic structure, it meant religion, the family…anything associated with what he deemed as infected with capitalism. Thus, when Lenin (and later Stalin) advocated for the mass extermination of anyone who disagreed with the Bolsheviks, he would accuse even fellow Marxists like Trotsky as really being capitalists who deserved to be killed. The insanity of Communist Russia is perfectly illustrated in George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm.
Almost as much as capitalists, if not more so, Lenin and the Bolsheviks also targeted Christians. After all, Marx himself had called religion the “opiate of the people.” What he meant was that he accused capitalists and the capitalist-run state governments of using religion as a manipulative tool to keep the proletariat working class in line, thereby forever tying religion to capitalism. In Lenin’s government, therefore, it was only logical: in order to destroy capitalism, part of the plan must be to exterminate religion as well. Since Russia was the center of Orthodox Christianity, Communists made a concentrated effort to persecute and annihilate Christians throughout the USSR.
All in all, more Christians were martyred during the seventy years of Communist rule in the USSR than all the Christian martyrs in the previous 1900 years. Think about that for a moment. It is commonly accepted that upwards of 50 million Christians were killed, in fact martyred, in the Soviet Union alone. The USSR killed more than 60 million people, and Communist China killed more than 70 million people.
Amazingly, despite the historical proof that Communist regimes have killed more people in human history than any other movement, there are still people today that argue that Communist USSR would have been a lot different if Lenin would have lived and if Stalin had not come to power—because it was Stalin who corrupted Communism. Such thinking is delusional.
The Underlying Worldview of Communism: A Purely “Scientific” Approach to Utopia
So how could such genocide happen? To be clear, the 20th century was the bloodiest, most inhuman century in human history, and the bulk of that inhumanity came from Communist regimes. And no, wanting a single-payer health care system doesn’t mean one is a Communist who wants to commit mass murder. But what we need to see with Communism is that what Communist regimes have routinely done is completely in line with the worldview that Communism represents. It is, if you will, the full-fruition of the utopian dream of many Enlightenment thinkers who wanted a society where religion was annihilated, where “the deity” was viewed as “the will of the people” as embodied in the state, and where the state would “force people to be free” from the shackles of religion.
The Communist ideal was already set up by Marx, and so when Darwin’s theory of evolution was established, the Communists incorporated it into their worldview. After all, human beings weren’t made in God’s image, because there is no God. Human beings are just evolved animals; so therefore, since the supreme goal is the health of the state, what do you do with human beings who impinge on that goal? Well, what do you do with animals? Well, it’s up to the elites to use the same science used in breeding animals and husbandry, and go about breeding a better human being, one that is freed from religion, and whose only aim is to do whatever is necessary for the good of the state.
Dr. Fred Schwartz was a prolific writer who continually warned those in the West about the dangers of Communism throughout the 1950s-1960s. You can find his books on Amazon, as well as many articles online. In one article entitled, The Heart, Soul and Mind of Communism, he outlined what the “Communist playbook” for building a utopia essentially was. In entailed the following things:
- Destruction of the Capitalistic System, the root of all evil, by a violent revolution.
2. Institution of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
3. Liquidation of those classes of society “incurably diseased” by capitalism and considered dangerously infective.
4. Segregation of those “diseased but capable” of useful work in conditions of isolation.
5. Hospitalization of the “diseased but curable” in “corrective” labor camps (i.e. the Gulag)
6. Re-education of the total population in new relationships of labor with the emphasis on labor rather than reward.
7. The emergence of the young generation with characters uninfluenced by Capitalism and appropriate to a socialist environment.
8. The perfection of human nature.
9. The withering away of the State; the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
10. The emergence of Communism.
The thing to realize that the Communists did not view the USSR as the Communist Utopia (neither does any current Communist regime). No, they viewed it essentially as the “science laboratory” in which the elites in government slowly, by means of “science,” bred better human beings that would be able to bring about that Communist Utopia. That is why the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the State never withers away—there’s always more work to be done; perfection never comes.
Conclusion
The insidious thing about Communism is not in its ultimate, stated goals, namely a perfect society, where everyone has enough to eat, and where equality is for all. The insidious thing is the worldview that Communism is based on. Having rejected God, Communists do not put the autonomous individual in the place of God (that would be more like the hyper-individualistic American dream!); they rather put the State in the place of God, and thus actually strip the individual of all dignity, worth, and rights. In the name of achieving their utopian dream, Communists are willing to kill whomever is necessary. Or as Stalin said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
Simply put, Communism is the pinnacle of inhumanity itself, because it denies and utterly rejects the existence of God.
