Page 46 - Communism in Ambush

COMMUNISM IN AMBUSH
44

Today, with supermarkets, bakeries, pastry shops, and restaurants
all around us; famine seems an alien concept. When we do hear about
famine, most often we think of it as a period of temporary hunger. But
the famines in Russia, China and Cambodia was a prolonged condition
that lasted for months, even years. Apart from grain and rice that vil-
lagers could grow to feed themselves, all produce was snatched from
their hands, leaving them nothing else to eat. People ate all the vegeta-
bles and fruit that they used to collect for sale, and all the animals they
could slaughter. When this supply quickly ran out, they would resort to
boiling leaves, grass and tree bark. After several weeks of continual
hunger, their bodies would grow weak and become emaciated. Some
would eat stray cats and dogs and other wild creatures, including in-
sects. Soon, wracked with pain, people would start to die, one after an-
other, with no one to bury them. Finally would appear famine's worst
aspect of all: cannibalism. People would start to eat corpses first, then at-
tack each other, snatching children to slaughter and devour. In line with
Communist philosophy, they would become bestialized indeed, and
human no longer.
This was the goal of the Communist regime. Unbelievable as it
might seem, it happened first in the 20th century, in Bolshevik Russia
under Lenin's leadership.
In 1918, shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin decided
to abolish private property. His decision's most important result was the
nationalization of land once owned by villagers. Bolshevik militants,
Cheka police agents, and Red Army units forced their way into farms all
over Russia and, under threat of arms, confiscated the produce that was
the only source of food for villagers already living in harsh conditions. A
quota was established that every farmer had to give to the Bolsheviks,
but in order to fill it, most farmers had to surrender all the produce they
had. Villagers who resisted were silenced by the most brutal methods.
In order to have not all their wheat seized, some farmers hid a por-
tion in storage. The Bolsheviks regarded this kind of behavior as a "be-
trayal of the revolution" and punished it with outrageous savagery. On
February 14, 1922, an inspector went to the region of Omsk and de-
scribed what happened there: