Page 10 - Communism in Ambush

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INTRODUCTION

C ommunism has stamped its mark on the 20th cen-

tury—a mark of aggression and cruelty, bloodshed
and tears. Historians have estimated that its ideology

has caused the death of 120 million people since the
Russian Revolution of 1917. These casualties include
not only soldiers killed on battlefields, but citizens murdered by their
own governments. The whole world has seen the pitiless slaughter car-

ried out by Communist leaders. One hundred million men and women,
from the elderly to young people and infants, lost their lives to this cold,

hard, savage ideology. Communist regimes have deprived tens of mil-
lions of their most basic rights and freedoms, ejecting people from their
homes and systematically subjecting them to famines, slavery in labor
camps and imprisonment. Millions have been the targets of Communist

guerilla groups and terrorist organizations, and still others have lived in
the fear of becoming targets for their bullets.

What are this ideology's roots? Where was Communism born? How
did such a cruel, bloodthirsty worldview find adherents and supporters
throughout the world? Why did it come to power and flourish, dragging

millions in its wake? How did it come to an end, with the collapse of the
Soviet Union? Or has it really ended, or does it still threaten every coun-
try on earth?