Have you every wondered why charlatans such as Ernst Zundel are almost immediately pilloried for denying the holocaust, but apparently prestigious left leaning academics have rarely in the past been taken to task for either denying completely or minimizing Stalin’s horrendous crimes which pale beside Hitler’s holocaust?

Why do we still regularly some sixty years after the fact, get Hollywood movies such as “Schindler’s List” dealing at length with Hitler’s atrocities (all true) but almost nothing showing the inhuman circumstances surrounding Stalin’s Gulag and the Terror or the Great Famine? I recall one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books being made into a movie, but that’s about all. I saw it but I don’t recall this particular film being a Hollywood production. This is something that has puzzled and frustrated many ever since our parents and grandparents escaped at great personal peril from what was aptly termed “the evil empire” and which in fact was responsible for many more deaths and suffering than that of Hitler’s Reich that was supposed to last for a thousand years.

One would have expected that with post-Cold War access (although deliberately limited by the former “organs” who still physically control most of the surviving records) to Soviet archives starting more than a decade ago as well as the release of previously secret material known as the “Venona” project, the younger group of historians without the millstone around their necks of being known in the past as “fellow travelers” or “red diaper babies” would to a large degree have set the record straight.

For those of you not aware of “Venona”, this was a top secret project in which American security forces actually managed to crack Soviet codes on some wire traffic for a short period of time during the latter part of the Second World War. The codes were not broken until several years after the war and some were only partially or never decrypted. These together with the revelations provided by the defector Igor Gouzenko disclosed the extent of massive Soviet intelligence penetration and subversion in Britain, Canada and the United States.

The Venona transcripts together with evidence from defectors, high level non-defecting former members of the “organs” and the Soviet archives prove that the Rosenbergs and many others were indeed spies. As well, both the Canadian and US Communist parties were extensively funded and under complete control of Moscow, actively engaged in espionage and subversion. That is not to say that there might have been “true believer” party members either blinded by what was in reality a secular religion or sheer naiveté didn’t know what was going on at the time. At the time the CPUSA had two wings, one was public and the other a murky underground secret organization highly trained in the Soviet Union.

Senator McCarthy had it more or less right. Unfortunately, because of personal weakness he managed to present his case in such an incompetent manner that for decades he was somewhat of an embarrassment to those trying to reveal the truth. It didn’t help that his choice of assistants could have been better. Fortunately, he together with other once derided Cold Warriors such as Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes are finally in process of being rehabilitated by many serious mainstream historians.

A few of the older “progressive” generation admit that the scales have finally dropped from their eyes, either partially or fully. Most now prefer to describe themselves as “social activists” or some other innocuous term other than “communist”. When confronted with conclusive evidence that can’t be refuted anymore, they now portray those who violated their oaths of secrecy, betrayed their country and passed on vital secrets to the Soviets as somehow being noble and acting selflessly for the good of mankind in general. They are excused because what they did was morally right. The fact that the Soviets were allies in the cause against fascism is often cited as justification, never mind that Soviet scientists did not see fit to share their secret scientific information.

Despite what has become generally common public knowledge in the last decade or so, the United States is still viewed by many as the aggressor in the Cold War and the North American Communist parties were noble and heroic in their struggles for a better world. Many of this crowd and their offspring still show up to riot at global trade conferences or vocally protest when the leader of the free world comes to town for a state visit. You have to ask yourself who or what is funding all the free bus rides and courses on how to obstruct the police for those rather scruffy “do-goodniks”.

Encounter Books very recently (2003) published a book by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr titled “In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage”. It makes very interesting reading and I highly recommend it.

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