From the Soviet Union to the CCP, the Same Lies Continue to Harm People

(Minghui.org) During the Soviet famine of 1932-1933, starving people were shot for trying to steal grain from the local commune and “executed even for trying to pick up a few loose seeds on the ground,” explained Oleh Shamshur, ambassador from Ukraine to the United States, in 2006. He also cited the testimony of Mykhaylo Naumenko, who was 11 at the time, “From our village of 75 homes, by May 24, houses were empty because all the inhabitants had died.”

Some 30 years later, similar tragedies happened in China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “One report, dated November 30, 1960, and circulated to the top leadership — most likely including Mao — tells how a man named Wang Ziyou had one of his ears chopped off, his legs tied up with wire, and a 10-kilogram stone dropped on his back before he was branded with a sizzling iron. His crime: digging up a potato,” wrote Frank Dikötter, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and author of Mao's Great Leap to Famine.

Dikötter spent several years in China between 2005 and 2009 examining hundreds of documents. He also read about a boy who stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village. A local official named Xiong Dechang forced the boy's father to bury his son alive on the spot. The father died of grief three weeks later.

Throughout the 20^th century, more than 60 million people in the Soviet Union lost their lives due to wars, starvation, and political purges. In Communist China, as many as 80 million people have died of unnatural causes. Such facts, however, were tightly guarded as “top secret” because the knowledge being made public could threaten their totalitarian dictatorship.

Reflecting upon the lies of the the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), we can see many similarities to those told by the CCP, which is still deceiving both Chinese citizens and the international community. A case in point is the coronavirus outbreak: the CCP's cover-up has turned an epidemic into a global pandemic, killing more than half a million people worldwide.

The following are just a few of the communist parties’ big lies.

Domestic Disinformation

The Soviet Union experienced three great famines. The first one was during the Civil War of 1921, when the CPSU collected grain, destroyed rural productivity, and dampened farmers’ enthusiasm. Russia’s grain output fell by half, and 5 million people starved to death. Cannibalism was seen in many areas. The second famine occurred in 1929, when Stalin forced farmers to join collective farms and purchased agricultural produce at extremely low prices, while the price of grain sold to farmers was astonishingly high. That led to the deaths of 8 million people, including one quarter of the entire population of Ukraine. The third great famine took place during 1946 and 1947.

In addition to devastating famines, people in the Soviet Union struggled with shortages of daily necessities as a result of a decline in light industry, since top priority was given to heavy industry and the military. On top of all this, a great number of people were subjected to political purges and repression during the Stalin era, and everyone lived in fear. Meanwhile, the CPSU told people they were living lives of unparalleled bliss.

The CCP has told a similar lie throughout its reign. When more than 40 million people died from starvation as a result of the Great Leap Forward, the Party told the Chinese that they were better off than in other countries and that two-thirds of the world’s people were suffering in poverty. In China today, more than 600 million people are struggling on a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan (around $140 USD). In fact, China ranked 92 out of 150 countries on the UN's World Happiness Report 2020, far behind Western countries.

The CCP also tells citizens that China is the safest place in the world and that only the CCP can protect them. Their propaganda is filled with exaggerated reports on issues in the U.S., such as shootings, riots, protesters, the severity of coronavirus infections, and so on. The fact is that 68% of the unemployed in the U.S. have received cash relief even greater than their salaries, and daily necessities are distributed to people in need of help for free.

If China is the safest country as the CCP claims, then why does the government refuse to arrange for Chinese students who got stuck overseas to return home? Why does it spend hundreds of billions on domestic “stability” and monitoring its own people? Without rule of law, freedom of speech, and freedom of belief, this kind of stability, brought about by heavy-handed suppression, is anything but.

Poor People Propping Up a Strong Nation

It’s true that the Soviet armed forces, especially when it came to nuclear weapons, surpassed the United States as the world’s strongest military power in the mid-1980s, but to suggest that the Soviet Union was prosperous and strong would have been a grave mistake.

To maintain its military supremacy, the Soviet Union committed more than 80% of its industrial investment into heavy industry, which had little to do with people’s livelihoods. People had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to queue up for daily necessities. People starved and farmers were exploited. This “empire” was built on a shaky foundation.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev once said that the past modernization at the expense of the people, the modernization to earn “face” for the country, the modernization for leaders’ worship of military power, the modernization to showcase “imperial glory,” and the development model by which the people became victims of the “national success ” were all proven to be the antithesis of “modern civilization.”

Regrettably, the lessons of the CPSU are still regarded as “magic weapons” by the CCP, which enthusiastically embraces the four so-called “modernizations” and believes that they are a reflection of China's prosperity and power.

While many people in China live in poverty, the CCP’s foreign aid has amounted to as much as 6 trillion yuan in the past four years, a truly astronomical figure. The CPSU also offered generous financial aid to other countries in order to export its “red revolution” while leaving itself with massive debts. The CCP is following in the CPSU’s footsteps today by promoting communist ideology globally at the cost of Chinese citizens’ standard of living.

The Inherent Corruption of Communist Leaders

Communist leaders such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and so on were often worshipped as “great saviors” with high morals. Although they opposed religious beliefs, they deified themselves. Their ruthlessness, cold-bloodedness and extreme selfishness, on the other hand, were carefully concealed and unknown to people in communist countries even today.

Ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya was said to have been one of Stalin’s mistresses. In 2004, she said this of Stalin: “He could be very sweet and very nice, but that was probably just the impression he created. Because at his core he was a bad person - vindictive and angry.”

Vera Davydova was said to have been Stalin’s most favored mistress and was with him for nearly two decades. In her memoir Confessions of Stalin's Lover, she described how ruthlessly and deceitfully Stalin and his senior colleagues fought for power and how profligate and devoid of principles they were in their debauched private lives. She also described how her life was spared when Alexander N. Pskrebyshev, believed to be Stalin’s most trusted official, didn’t obey Stalin’s last order to throw her into a cage of wolves.

Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were extremely indifferent when it came to human life, even the loss of millions. Engles wrote in The Magyar Struggle, “The next world war will not only cause the reactionary classes and reactionary dynasties, but also the entire reactionary people to disappear from the surface of the earth. That is also progress.”

Mao Zedong, the most influential Communist leader in China and hailed as the “great savior” of the people, in fact had his hands stained with the blood of tens of millions. He was ruthless to his comrades, ordinary people, and even his loved ones.

Yang Kaihui, Mao’s second wife, was captured by the Kuomintang (KMT) after Mao and his red army attacked Changsha. She was executed at the age of 29 after she refused to denounce Mao, leaving behind three young children.

According to historical records, Mao had many opportunities to save her by relocating her and their children to safety before the attack. But by then he had already taken up with another beautiful young woman, He Zizhen. It was believed that Mao ignored the immediate danger facing Yang and their children because he didn’t want them to interfere with his relationship with his new wife.

History repeated itself as Mao dumped his third wife, He Zizhen, ten years later. She was allegedly sent to the Soviet Union to be treated for mental illness. Mao married his fourth wife, Jiang Qing, who became very powerful during the Cultural Revolution but lost ground after Mao’s death. She was tried and jailed, and she committed suicide in 1991 while on medical parole. According to Mao’s personal secretary Li Rui, Yang described Mao as “a hooligan both in politics and in private life.”

Zhou Enlai, Mao’s right-hand man and China’s premier from 1954 until his death in 1976, was largely regarded by the Chinese people as a “nice premier” with integrity and high moral standards. However, when what he did behind the scenes was made known, especially during the Cultural Revolution, people were in total disbelief: Zhou was personally responsible for the persecution and even deaths of some of the most senior CCP officials, as well as people close to him, to save his own skin.

Take Ms. Sun Weishi for example. Ms. Sun was the daughter of a veteran CCP member, who also held a high-ranking position in the national government at the time and was a close friend of Zhou Enlai. Ms. Sun’s father was captured and executed in April 1927 when she was only five. She was later adopted by Zhou Enlai and studied in the Soviet Union. She became an accomplished artist. Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, who was said to be jealous of her talent, persecuted her. To protect himself, Zhou personally signed Ms. Sun’s arrest warrant. She was brutally beaten and abused and died several months later. When she died, her body was covered in bruises, her hands and feet were in shackles, and a nail had been hammered into the top of her skull.

In a way, it is not surprising that those “great” communist leaders treated their comrades and their family members so ruthlessly and cold-bloodedly. For them and many others in the system, “Party nature” far outweighed “human nature.”

The CCP Is Still Lying to the World Today

After the CPSU collapsed, former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov once described how Soviet officials worked: “We stole what was entrusted to our care, offered and accepted bribes... while indulging in our lies, we put medals on each others’ chests. Everyone did this, from top to bottom, from bottom to top.”

As Western countries wake up from the never-ending stream of lies churned out by the CCP, a coalition is coming together to hold the CCP accountable for the terrible loss of life and catastrophic social and economic destruction. That coalition is made up of countries that have fallen victim to the devastating pandemic caused by the CCP’s intentional cover-up of the outbreak and subsequent disinformation campaigns.

The CCP’s Hong Kong National Security Law has provided more reason for such a coalition, as more countries realize that the fundamental principles of freedom, peace, justice, human rights and the rule of law will never have a place on its agenda.

Related article in Chinese: 【认清中共】从“独夫”残害亲人看共产主义者