LESSONS ON COMMUNISM
Last month the SA Communist Party commemorated the 19th anniversary of Joe Slovo's death. He is buried beneath a Hammer and Sickle carved in stone.
Communism has killed millions of people, and millions more lived miserable lives under communist rule. As a symbol of death and destruction, the Hammer and Sickle is as heinous as the Swastika. How could anyone be proud of it today, or wish it to have it as a grave stone?
I recently met Professor Yuri Maltsev, a former senior advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, last ruler of the former Soviet Union. He says the only reason people worked in the USSR was because of fear. It was "one huge concentration camp".
A country that spanned 11 time zones, with immense mineral resources, had a GDP less than 10% that of America. Centralised planning meant shortages of everything, so queuing became a way of life. It has been estimated that Soviet citizens spent about 6 years of their lives queuing for basic goods.
There are no accurate figures for those who were murdered or died in famines in the USSR. Figures range from 20 million to 60 million deaths, but as Stalin said "one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic".