Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'communism'

January 21, 2022

Lenin’s ugly legacy of identity politics

“I broke sharply with all questions of religion,” said Vladimir Lenin, with typical vituperation. “I took off my cross and threw it in the rubbish bin.” Such was a metaphor for the dark turn made by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who came to be known by an alias, “Lenin.” Continue Reading...
November 30, 2021

Xi Jinping manipulates history on his way to a third term

China’s Xi Jinping has already served longer than any U.S. president other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And Xi is likely to pass FDR in just a couple years. The Chinese president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary has secured the support necessary for a third term—expected to be followed by a fourth and even fifth one, should Xi, currently 68, live long enough. Continue Reading...
October 15, 2021

Czechs vote communists out of parliament

Since 1925, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia has had a seat at the table in Czech parliaments. While momentarily sidelined by the Nazi occupation during World War II, the party managed to centralize power rather quickly thereafter, working with Moscow to crush dissent and impose totalitarian control from 1948 until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Continue Reading...
July 22, 2021

The crumbling façade of Cuban communism

It has become routine for Bernie Sanders and other self-described democratic socialists to praise Cuba for its high literacy rates and universal health care. More recently, Black Lives Matter released a statement supporting the communist regime while criticizing U.S. Continue Reading...
July 19, 2021

Cuba Libre: Protestors call for an end to communism and oppression

Cubans are taking to the streets over food shortages and outrageously high prices, calling for an end to the country’s communist regime with mass protests. “Cuban citizens have taken to the streets across the country for the first time in more than six decades to protest against deteriorating living conditions and the lack of basic goods and services, including medical attention amid increasing numbers of coronavirus infections,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Continue Reading...
January 14, 2021

Solzhenitsyn: Prophet to America

Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West. David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson, eds. University of Notre Dame Press. 2020. 392 pages. English literature scholar Ed Ericson told a story about teaching Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago to American undergrads, who knew plenty about the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and other dehumanized minorities but next to nothing about the genocidal history of the Bolshevik and Stalinist regimes. Continue Reading...
April 15, 2020

Hope: the theological, economic virtue

On Holy Saturday, I wrote the last of my series of “Lentenomics” articles on virtues and the good economy for the Italian daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana. I invited readers to reflect on “Hope: In ourselves and in our exchanges with others and God.” Continue Reading...