By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh ——Bio and Archives--July 24, 2023
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When it comes to history in school, most of us forget important events and dates as soon as we complete the course, pass the exams and get a passing grade. We use the excuse that life is too short and complicated--why bother to remember things and people who had long been dead and gone. What is there to learn?
However, if we don’t learn from history, if we neglect it, or even worse, change it to suit current ideologies and those in power, we no longer know where we came from, who we are, we lose that important connection to the past, and fail to appreciate the significant contributions famous men and women have made to humanity that still impact our lives today. We also fail to learn from the lessons of those who lived in infamy.
If we do not remember and respect past people and events, good or bad, we are bound to repeat disastrous mistakes. There are so many lessons to be learned from history! But we will not learn if we ban books, monuments, destroy buildings, archeological evidence, flags, statues, tombs, memorabilia, and factual evidence of humanity’s past existence.
Take for example, the millions of farmers, peasants, and workers who met their end under Stalin’s rule. The youth of today seem to idolize the system of abject fear and communist enslavement he established for millions of his own people. He terrorized countless innocents who refused to submit to his communist oppression or dared to criticize him; he eventually used mass terror against his own party members.
Stalin eliminated those he considered rivals to power by using “the organized terror of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” One such victim was Sergei M. Kirov, assassinated under mysterious circumstances. A member of the Politburo, Kirov was a direct threat to Stalin’s leadership. Kirov had been a friend of the exiled Leon Trotsky.
There were three distinct waves of his terror prior to WWII. The Communist Party forced a campaign in 1935 to “screen out undesirable elements and ‘enemies of the party.’”
1. The communist purges continued in 1936 with the “show trials.” A feature of the communist “justice,” the guilt of the accused was predetermined, and the courtroom drama served only as a medium to communicate a propaganda message” for the gullible and fearful public. The accused were forced to sign fake confessions, then were sentenced to death based on these forced confessions and shot immediately. A few received life prison sentences in Siberian gulags. Most of the condemned died eventually in these gulags from poor nutrition, exposure to the elements, torture, and severe work conditions.
2. In 1937 came the liquidation of the “enemies of the state” in the Soviet Army, Navy, and Air Force. The manufactured excuse was that they had spied for Germany and Japan. As a result of this purge, most of the Soviet marshals, generals, and colonels, and 30,000 lower rank officers had been killed. The military purge was murder of innocents but also ill-advised a year before the start of World War II.
3. The third “show trial” occurred in March 1938 in which the head of the secret police, Genrikh Yagoda, along with other 20 defendants, who produced the “confessions of the first show trials, were also accused as “enemies of the state.”
Stalin had executed the “11 men of October” who helped the Bolsheviks seize power in 1917. Stalin also killed all his former associates who had been members of Lenin’s Politburo. The only person who escaped his murderous rampage was Trotsky because he was in exile.
A few victims received public hearings, but most were executed summarily without trial, just based on having been questioned by the secret police.
Stalin stood unchallenged because he had consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat. He assumed the power of the Central Committee and had absolute control of the organization that had absolute control of the Soviet Union. There was no opposition left, he killed them all, and hired only people who were intimidated into submission subordinates. One such subordinate was Nikita S. Khrushchev, who managed the purge in Ukraine.
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J. Edgar Hoover wrote that “once the Communist party, itself a minority dictatorship, had taken control of the government, there was no problem in justifying its minority dictatorship over the state.”
After the successful October 1917 Revolution, the Russian Communists began the preparation of an international revolution which was meant to establish “a single world society.” That idea is heavily promoted around the globe today under the United Nation’s one world government.
The Soviet government even appropriated 2 million rubles “for the needs of the revolutionary internationalist movement.” The organization tasked with imposing communism on the entire world was the Communist International, or Comintern, conceived by Vladimir I. Lenin. He believed that Soviet communism would not succeed if he failed in initiating communism in Western Europe.
Documents show that a Soviet courier was arrested in 1920 in Berlin, carrying a message to the communists in the United States.
As luck would have it, the Americans did not wait very long to start their own Bolshevik/Marxist movement in September 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, of all places. They organized not one but two communist parties – the Communist Labor Party (formed by native-born Americans) and the Communist Party of America (formed by foreign-born residents). The two parties did not unite because the Russian members were against the Communist Labor Party.
They eventually united in 1921 after the intervention of the Comintern. But the idea of American exceptionalism promoted by the Communist Labor Party was always a thorn in the side of the Communist International.
Fast forward a century later in the United States and Lenin’s goal to success is closer than ever, thanks to American academia, the mainstream media, corrupt politicians drunk on power and wealth, and the public-school indoctrination by Marxist teachers and administrators, themselves propagandized in U.S. universities that were seeded with Marxism by German emigrees from the Frankfurter Schule who taught in teacher colleges in New York and around the country. And the communist propaganda continues today thanks to Colleges of Education around the country, churning out Marxist teachers and administrators.
The purging of history, of historical figures, of monuments, names, graves, and other memorabilia has accelerated to the point that even a monument from Arlington National Cemetery, dedicated to Civil War reconciliation, will be destroyed on Monday, July 24, 2023. The memorial plaque from Washington & Lee University, mentioning Traveller, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s famous and beloved horse, has been removed. Grave of Robert E. Lee's Horse Desecrated, Plaque to Beloved Traveller Removed - His Glory.Me
Peter Westbrook wisely said, “So much of our future [depends] on preserving our past.” We should heed his advice.
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Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, Ileana Writes is a freelance writer, author, radio commentator, and speaker. Her books, “Echoes of Communism”, “Liberty on Life Support” and “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” “Communism 2.0: 25 Years Later” are available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.