Dictators used sycophantic biographers, influential artists, and press agents to spread their cults and create the illusion of invincibility.
Flagg Taylor
As we remember the anti-totalitarian spirit of 1989, let us also recall that the spirit of Lenin is alive and well in China.
No matter one’s position in society, the vibrancy of communism, and its superiority to other systems, must be constantly affirmed.
Portrait of an artist as a young man, under Nazi and then communist rule.
In 1932 and 1933, Ukrainian peasants' grain was taken from them by force, and those who resisted were arrested, jailed, and often executed.
Journalists who wouldn’t cover up Soviet-caused famine in Ukraine were denounced in print by colleagues like Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
Anne Applebaum continues the work of Robert Conquest, whose “Harvest of Sorrow” first set the record straight about the Soviet-caused famine in Ukraine.
Flagg Taylor is associate professor of political science at Skidmore College. He is editor most recently of The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Václav Benda, 1977-1989 (St. Augustine’s Press, 2018). He is currently writing a book on Czech dissent in the 1970s and 1980s. He tweets at @FlaggTaylor4.