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Resolution 1096

 

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  International condemnation of communism

Kill The Tramp
by Hristo Hristov

"Kill the Tramp" is a documentary investigation into one of the most emblematic crimes of the Cold War - the murder of the Bulgarian dissident writer, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978. The work calls upon a large volume of previously unknown documents, many of which were contained within the secret archives of the former Bulgarian State Security Service. They prove that the assassination was organized and carried out by the Bulgarian State Security Service in accordance with the policies of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Part and Todor Zhivkov, the First Secretary in the aims of combating "hostile" Bulgarian emigres and the most vociferous critics of the regime abroad.

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Call for establishment of an international research institute for totalitarianism studies

The speakers at the EPP-ED Study Day "Reunification of European history", which took place today at the European Parliament, are calling for the establishment of an international commission that will assure a thorough and coordinated investigation of the historical and legal aspects of Soviet totalitarianism. For this purpose, an international research institute must be set up. Its findings will provide information to the international community in support of the evaluation of the totalitarian Communist regime as well as its legacy.

The conference speakers were united in their call for a resolution by the European Parliament condemning the crimes committed by the totalitarian communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. >>>

 

 

On 15 January 2005 in Sofia was founded a nonprofit association Institute for Study of Communist Crimes in Bulgaria. The Institute aims at studying the communist ideology and practice by analyzing and assessing the infiltration, the development and the activities of the communism in Bulgaria, informing the public opinion in Bulgaria and abroad about its crimes, and gathering proves for them which will contribute to its moral condemnation.

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Open Letter of the Institute for Study of Communist Crimes in Bulgaria

 

ARTICLES

The Crimes during the Communist Regime and the Attempts at Their Investigation after 10 November 1989
by Hristo Hristov
Journalist, Dnevnik daily

The Communist St. Bartholomew’s Massacres.
The Killings without Prosecution, Court or Sentence in the Autumn of 1944 in Bulgaria
by Hristo Troanski
Writer, journalist

The Repressions against the Catholic Church and against Catholics in Bulgaria (1944-1989)
by Svetlozar Eldarov
Professor, Dr. of History

The Pogrom over the Writers after 9 September 1944 – Moral and Culturological Aspects
by Tzveta Trifonova
Literary historian and critic

Bulgarian doctors and students of medicine - victims of the communist terror of 1944-1989

What befell Bulgaria in September 1944
by Professor Plamen S. Tzvetkov, Ph.D

About Anticommunism
by Edvin Sugarev

Condemning communism:
The Bulgarian Example

by Professor Plamen S. Tzvetkov, Ph.D.

Persecutions of ethnic minorities from 1944 until 1989

 


Vladimir Bukovsky:

I am aware of the PACE resolution. It is good in itself as an effort and intention. But what worries me is the question: who is going to control the investigation? It says: politically independent Commission in the centre and national committees in the member states. Well, practically in all post-communist countries we have at present communist (or neo-communist) governments. Are they going to create committees independent of themselves in order to investigate their own past crimes? I doubt this. At best, this resolution will be ignored. At worst, it will create a mechanism to whitewash the communist regimes of the past. I hope I am wrong, but the experience tells me this will be the case. The investigation must be conducted by an outside body with the help of public (not government-appointed!!!) groups inside of the countries in question. And we must be sure which groups will participate.

 


Condemning totalitarian Communism

Resolution adopted by the XVIth EPP Congress

...

  • calls for the European Union to adopt an official declaration for the international condemnation of totalitarian communism;
  • calls for the setting up of a European research and documentation centre, to continue collecting, assessing and publishing information about totalitarian communism, and provide a focus for further study and historical research; invites the designation of a “Day of Victims” of the totalitarian Communist regimes;
  • creation of a memorial museum of victims of communism.

10. calls on all those who intend to assume a political function in the EU institutions to disclose their professional and political activities in former communist states and to refrain from taking up a European post if they formed part of the repressive Communist enforcement agencies, or were involved in crimes against humanity.

full text >

The Bulgarian Parliament proclaimed
23 August as the day of remembrance
of the crimes of the national-socialist, communist and other totalitarian regimes,
and as a day for commemorating the victims of these regimes.

The decision>>

 

 

From the speech of Dr. Lee Edwards, Chairman of the “Memorial of the Victims of Communism” Foundation, September 9th 2007 in front of the Memorial of the Victims of Communism

At last
by Djanko Markov

 

 

PACE strongly condemns crimes of totalitarian communist regimes

Strasbourg, 25.01.2006 – The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today strongly condemned the massive human rights violations committed by totalitarian communist regimes and expressed sympathy, understanding and recognition for the victims of these crimes.

The Assembly – which brings together parliamentarians from 46 European countries – said in a resolution that these violations included individual and collective assassinations and executions, death in concentration camps, starvation, deportations, torture, slave labour and other forms of mass physical terror.

The peoples of the former USSR by far outnumbered other peoples in terms of the number of victims, the parliamentarians said.

They also called on all communist or post-communist parties in Council of Europe member states which had not so far done so “to reassess the history of communism and their own past […] and condemn them without any ambiguity”.

“The Assembly believes that this clear position of the international community will pave the way to further reconciliation,” the parliamentarians added.

The Council of Europe was “well placed” for this debate, the Assembly pointed out, since all former European communist countries, with the exception of Belarus, are now its members and the protection of human rights and the rule of law are the basic values for which it stands.

A draft recommendation calling on Europe’s governments to adopt an official declaration of the international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes did not receive the necessary two-thirds majority of the votes cast.

A draft recommendation called on Europe’s governments to adopt a similar declaration and to carry out legal investigations of individuals engaged in crimes committed under totalitarian communist regimes did not receive the necessary two-thirds majority of the votes cast.

Link to the resolution >

Link to the report >

L’APCE condamne avec vigueur les crimes des régimes communistes totalitaires

Strasbourg, 25.01.2006 – L’Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe (APCE) a aujourd’hui condamné avec vigueur les violations massives des droits de l’homme commises par les régimes communistes totalitaires et a rendu hommage aux victimes de ces crimes.

L’Assemblée – qui rassemble des parlementaires de 46 états européens – a déclaré dans une résolution que ces violations incluaient les assassinats et les exécutions, qu’ils soient individuels ou collectifs, les décès dans des camps de concentration, la mort par la faim, les déportations, la torture, le travail forcé et d’autres formes de terreur physique collective.

Les populations de l’ex-URSS étaient en nombre beaucoup plus victimes que d’autres nationalités.

Ils ont également invité tous les partis communistes ou post-communistes des Etats membres du Conseil de l’Europe qui ne l’ont pas encore fait à “réexaminer l’histoire du communisme et leur propre passé […] et à les condamner sans ambiguïté”.

“L’Assemblée estime que la clarté de cette position adoptée par la communauté internationale favorisera la poursuite de la réconciliation,” ont ajouté les parlementaires.

Le Conseil de l'Europe était “bien placé” pour lancer un tel débat, selon les parlementaires, puisque tous les anciens pays communistes d’Europe, à l’exception du Bélarus, en sont aujourd’hui membres et la protection des droits de l'homme et l'Etat de droit sont les valeurs fondamentales qu’il défend.

Un projet de recommandation invitant les gouvernements de l’Europe à adopter une déclaration similaire et les invitant à promouvoir les enquêtes juridiques à l’encontre de personnes impliquées n’a pas recu la majorité nécessaire de deux-tiers des voix exprimées.

Res. 1481 | Nécessité d’une condamnation internationale des crimes des régimes communistes totalitaires >

Lien vers le rapport >

  Support for the Draft Resolution


Dear Mr. Van Linden,

I would like to thank you and your group for the initiation of a resolution condemning Communism and to express my full support for it.
Freedom cannot thrive if the doctrines and practices of Communism and Nazism are not exposed and condemned.
The attempt to minimize the criminal and antihuman character of Communism as compared to Nacism has had damaging effect on the newly liberated countries.
It creates moral confusion and uncertainty and breeds cynicism and scepticism towards justice and law.
It is important to prove that the values which the new democracies want to share with the west are not false or volatile.
This is what makes your initiative so significant and deserving full and unconditioned support.

Yours most sincerely:
Philip Dimitrov,

Prime Minister of Bulgaria (1991-92)
Bulgaria's Ambassador to the UN and US (1997-2002)

 

 


...Sadly, 14 years after the fall of the communist regime, the truth about the real nature of communism in my country is having hard time coming to light. The files of the communist secret police are closed. The majority of the influential media are controlled by people, associated with that same secret police. Historical texts avoid "controversial" judgments of the communist past and communism is far from being treated as an evil, equal to that of nazism. The country is still covered by communist monuments and new ones are springing up. Large groups of society have sunk into apathy and moral relativism, in which western democracy and Soviet communism are considered symmetric. Such western values as personal freedom, human dignity and respect for the rights and dignity of others are of very low priority. The former communist leaders have skillfully exploited the western democratic phraseology on political freedom and human rights to avoid any substantive or moral sanctions against themselves.

I believe that our society needs help in ridding itself from the communist doctrine, still poisoning its collective consciousness. Your act, dear Mr. Van Der Linden, is a very important step in that direction. Other possible actions by western politicians could include refusing European recognition for the former communist parties unless the latter break with their communist past, passing recommendations to the member states for adoption of legislation against totalitarian communist propaganda, passing recommendations for special legislation concerning communist crimes against humanity.

Yours truly,
Orlin Stoytchev

Associate Professor of Physics,
American University in Bulgaria

 


Dear Mr. Van der Linden,

I SUPPORT wholeheartedly the draft resolution for international condemnation of totalitarian communism proposed by you to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The motion could not have been more timely. While the world is rightly condemning the crimes committed by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust, little or next to nothing is known of the true nature of Communism and its far-reaching genocidal policy.
...In Bulgaria, which was forcefully occupied by the Red Army in 1944, thousands upon thousands of completely innocent and politically non-committed people were murdered or illegally sent to labour camps. The political elite and opposition were physically exterminated in 1948. The population of villages and smaller towns was sometimes decimated. The intelligentsia in particular was subject to imprisonment, torture, humiliation and murder en mass.

I feel particularly strongly about Communism since four members of my family disappeared without trace on 7 June 1946 from home: my father, my brother in law, my uncle and a cousin. Their guilt? They did not support the Communist take-over. Their fate? No record of what has been done to them, no trace of any document.

...In memory of all those who perished under Communism in my country, I firmly support the anticommunist resolution.

Yours sincerely,
Aglika Markova, Sofia, Bulgaria

 


...Yesterday my 13-year-old son told me that a friend of his thought about communism as a good idea, that was corrupted by the cruel dictator Stalin! Could you imagine a similar statement about the Nazism and Hitler? How many people know that communism was a social experiment performed dozens of times and invariably led to disastrous results! The evidence is so overwhelming, that the inevitability of large-scale human suffering in a communist society seems almost like a law of Nature. The free people can remain free only if they never forget the suffering of millions of victims in communist and other totalitarian societies.

Momchil Velkovsky, Nashville, USA

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  Internet Sources
The KARTA Center is an independent non-governmental organization (incorporated as a foundation), documenting and popularizing the recent history of Poland and Eastern Europe. It continues the activities of the illegal "Karta" and the clandestine Eastern Archives of the 1980s.

 

 
Memorial is a movement which arose in the years of perestroika. Its main task was the awakening and preservation of the societal memory of the severe political persecution in the recent past of the Soviet Union. Memorial is a group of specialized research, human rights, and education centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and several other cities. Memorial is a museum, a repository of documents, and a number of specialized libraries. Memorial is wide-ranging and simultaneous scrupulous historical research of topics that were until recently inaccessible to Russian scholars: the GULag, the history of the security organizations VChK (the Cheka)-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB, statistics on political repression in the Soviet Union, and dissidents' resistance during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era. Memorial is the undertaking of risky observation missions to "hot spots" on the territory of the CIS. Memorial is mountains of factual material, collected in regions of armed conflict. It is painstaking verification and analysis of the collected material, and the preparation and publication of reports on the conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan, Transdnistria, in the zone of Ossetian-Ingushetian conflict, and, finally, in Chechnya.
Our task is not to teach society, but to find the facts, collect them, contemplate them, and to publish them. What will come of this uncomfortable truth – will it be grasped by society or it reject with disgust – this is the choice of the historical journey. It is a no less important choice than the choice of state form or economic structure.
Ten years ago, Memorial began the systematic collection of evidence about the communist terror. Tens of thousands of people – former convicts, their relatives and friends – gave Memorial their materials on their own initiative. During these years, a substantial archive on the history of repression was collected.
 
Bukovsky's Soviet Archives at INFO-RUSS
It is a huge collection of documents directly copied from archives of KPSS (former communist party of former Sov Union) including KGB ("Komitet of Gosudarstevennoi Bezopasnosti") reports to its Central Committee.
The initiative of starting this endeavor belonged to Julia Zaks, a "veteran" emigre, whose dissident activity track in Moscow goes back 30+ years. L. Chernikhov who joined the work at a later stage, did a great job on re-organizing the documents according to the subject and cross-referencing it." Alex Kaplan
Ideology and Politics of Soviet Communist Party (KPSS); KPSS and Terror in the USSR; Suppression of Dissisdents; KPSS and Communist World; KPSS and Non-Communist World; Communist Terror in the World; Some Aspects of Soviet International Politics.

Imagine that in 1945 the allies wanted from the nazism perestroika instead of capitulation - what would have happened ? In a few years the nazis would have re-grouped and seized the government under a different name; their organization was strong in whole Europe and they were closely allied.
Vladimir Bukovsky

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