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Virgilio Fernndez del Real sent his last testament via WhatsApp on 28 November 2019. I opened the video to see him propped up in bed at his colonial-era haienda in Guanajuato, Mexico. Bloodshot eyes peered out above a rampant white beard. A big red, gold and purple flag, representing Spains short-lived republican democracy from the 1930s, was spread out behind him. My birthday is on 26 December, when I will be 101, he wheezed in Spanish, though he clearly did not believe he would make it. I still have the strength to say: Viva la Repblica Espaola!

Nine days before that birthday, his wife, Estela, sent another message: Fifteen minutes ago, Virgilio went on his journey to the Fathers house, transcending into the infinite. He is no longer suffering.

They had stayed in my Madrid apartment 18 months earlier, so that Virgilio could recover from a two-week hospital stay after having fallen ill during a visit to Spain. My kitchen became a shrine as visitors trooped through, anxious to thank Virgilio for serving in a volunteer army called the International Brigades. That unit of 35,000 foreigners from 80 of todays nations had fought against fascism in the Spanish civil war and been disbanded in 1938, a year before the short-lived democratic republic was finally extinguished. More than 50 years later, their actions still resonated.

The republic is an emotional touchstone for leftwing Spaniards, but admirers of the volunteers are spread across the world. Groups devoted to their memory exist in the US, Britain and half a dozen European countries. Mention of them can provoke sudden displays of enthusiasm, as I discovered when I began researching the group: a Spanish journalist pulled down his shirt to reveal the Brigades triangular symbol tattooed on his shoulder; a German in California sang their songs; and a Scottish writer at a neoliberal magazine talked wistfully about an uncle from Glasgow who had volunteered. David Simon, creator of The Wire, is now planning a drama series about the International Brigades.

Elsewhere, opinion is dramatically opposed. In Poland, streets dedicated to the Dabrowski battalion of the International Brigades are being renamed by the Institute of National Remembrance, which oversees a controversial decommunisation law passed by the ultraconservative Law and Justice party in 2017. The brigaders had served Stalinism, their Polish critics argued. They were not entirely wrong.

International Brigades veterans went on to serve as iron curtain prime ministers or equivalent in East Germany, Hungary and Albania. They provided dozens of ministers, generals, police chiefs and ambassadors across all Europes communist regimes forming a potent elite, although they were mostly working-class. In East Germany, former International Brigades volunteers founded and ran the notorious Stasi. Suppressing freedom was part of their job. Little surprise, then, that some countrymen now despise them.

History is neither neat nor clean, especially when it comes to past wars. The first casualty of war is said to be truth, but really it is nuance. War presents stark, binary choices. Kill or be killed. One side or the other. The truth is more complex than that, as the story of the International Brigades and their afterlife shows.

In early October 1936, a 21-year-old classics graduate from Cambridge, Bernard Knox, slipped an old pistol into his bag and passed through the border control at Dover on his way to Spain. The pistol belonged to a Cambridge professor of ancient Greek called Francis Cornford, who had last used it as an officer in the first world war. Cornford had given it to his son, John, a 20-year-old poet and friend of Knoxs who was travelling with him. Knox carried the gun because Cornfords passport showed he had already been to Spain, and police were suspicious of visitors to a country where, in July, Franco and his generals had started a civil war. Britain was promoting non-intervention a sop to Hitler and Mussolini, whose troops were blatantly fighting for Franco. It did not want British volunteers taking part.

In the early days of the civil war, before returning to Britain to recruit volunteers, Cornford had joined one of the militias that emerged when, in response to the coup, a counter-revolution broke out inside the republic. Socialists, anarchists, communists and regionalists in Catalonia and elsewhere grabbed control of the streets. Militias abounded, with women also donning uniforms and carrying weapons. The women are fine, wrote Felicia Browne, a British artist who joined a militia group. They were heady days, with the streets of Barcelona daubed in revolutionary slogans described by another volunteer fighter, George Orwell, in Homage to Catalonia as startling and overwhelming.

While recruiting, Cornford had depicted the conflict as a dusty, lazy revolutionary war much as people imagined the Mexican revolution that ended in 1920 rather than the sophisticated scientific destruction it soon became. His group had no idea which unit they would join, but when they reached Spain, the International Brigades had just been formed. The Communist International, or Co mintern, the Moscow-based organisation advocating for world communism, did the arranging. The arrival of spontaneous volunteers such as these provided the impulse. Another recruit, Winston Churchills rebel nephew Esmond Romilly, had cycled across France fuelled by coffee and cognac before volunteering and declaring himself a member of that very large class of unskilled labourers with a public-school accent. He sailed on a boat from Marseille, with watch duty split in two-hour shifts between French, Germans, Poles, Italians, Yugoslavs, Belgians, Flemish and Russian-speakers.

Poorly armed and virtually untrained, the first volunteers found themselves defending Madrid against Francos experienced and ferocious colonial force, the Army of Africa, just a few weeks later. Cornfords group operated a machine gun in the philosophy faculty of the brand-new University City campus. They built barricades out of thick tomes on early-19th-century German philosophy and Indian metaphysics. Enemy bullets gave up before reaching page 350, making them believe old tales of soldiers saved by Bibles in breast pockets. I think I killed a fascist, Cornford, a former pacifist, wrote excitedly to his girlfriend, Margot Heinemann, on 8 December. Fifteen or 16 of them were running from a bombardment If it is true, its a fluke.

After Francos colonial army was airlifted from north Africa to Seville by German planes in an operation that Hitler personally named Operation Magic Fire (inspired by a section of Wagners opera Siegfried), it had swept easily towards Madrid. It was halted at the University City, and the International Brigades were hailed as heroes in Spain and elsewhere. Their discipline set an example to the chaotic republican army, even if some volunteers mistakenly thought idealism could replace training and paid with their lives. The young and previously untried war photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro took their pictures, and they were lionised by Ernest Hemingway and the New York Times, among others. War correspondents of almost all nationalities blessed their luck at being able to find frontline sources among the brigaders who spoke their language.

Fresh recruits arrived by their hundreds every week from as far away as China, Chile and Abyssinia, though most came from Europe or the Americas and many were already political or economic exiles. At least one in 10 were Jews, rebelling against their position as fascisms chosen victims. The American historian and veteran Albert Prago called the International Brigades the vehicle through which Jews could offer the first organised armed resistance to European fascism. In fact, almost all brigaders saw themselves fighting a global battle to stop fascism, in which Spain was just a part. With Hitler and Mussolini on the other side, that seemed obvious if not to politicians in London, Paris or Washington.

Many of those first recruits had died, or been badly wounded, by the end of 1936. Cornford was killed at Lopera, in A ndalusia, the day after he turned 21. Knox had already been badly injured, falling to the ground with a fountain of blood spurting from his shoulder, convinced he was dying. I was consumed with rage furious, violent rage. Why me? he recalled later. I was just 21 and had barely begun living my life. Volunteer British and American battalions each of about 700 men were not formed until the following year, and first fought at Jarama, about 20 miles from Madrid, that February. About 700 women also enlisted, but the republic sent militiawomen away from the frontline, and most served as doctors, nurses, translators or administrators.

The brigaders were shock troops who generally, but not always, fought courageously. Sometimes, they turned battles around. Other times they were routed. Those captured were mostly shot. Prisoners left alive were sent to a medieval monastery converted into a jail at San Pedro de Cardea near Burgos and made to do fascist salutes. A German-trained military psychologist, Lt Col Antonio Vallejo-Najera, conducted tests designed to prove that Marxists (as he wrongly assumed they all were) were either psychopaths or congenitally dim. He satisfied himself that this really was the case, but in an academic paper expressed surprise that, even in jail, the immense majority remain firmly attached to their ideas.

It was not all heroics. A considerable number of International Brigade volunteers deserted. Some were shot by their own commanders for doing so. After capturing the town of Quinto, their senior officers ordered them to shoot all the enemy officers, sergeants and corporals. The victims were kids just like us, recalled the Canadian volunteer Peter Frye after being assigned to a firing squad. Women were often treated by the brigades French commander (and senior Comintern official) Andr Marty or his security staff as suspected spies. In one case, Marion Merriman, the wife of a senior American officer, was raped by an unnamed Slav officer. She kept silent about it, in order to prevent the American Abraham Lincoln battalion rebelling in her defence. This must be my secret burden. I cannot tell anyone ever, she remembers telling herself in a memoir dedicated to her husband, Robert Hale Merriman, who was killed.

By the time the last brigaders left Spain, 7,000 had died. They had lost their war. Franco declared victory on 1 April 1939 (he would rule as dictator until 1975). By then, most brigaders had returned home or were locked up by France with the rest of the fleeing republican army in vast camps as it dealt with one of Europes biggest refugee crises since the first world war. Those not welcome in their own countries Germans, Italians, Poles and others or later deemed dangerous by Vichy authorities spent several years in the French camps. Others who did return home were watched closely by police in their own countries. Britains MI5 held files on many, as did the Dutch police. Authorities painted them as dangerous, foolhardy or wrong. But that would not last.

Hitler invaded Poland exactly five months after Franco declared victory. Suddenly, almost everyone agreed that fascism had to be fought with weapons.

On 21 August 1941, French International Brigade veteran Pierre Georges and two colleagues met at the Barbs-Rochechouart metro station in Paris. All three carried pistols. Pierre had joined the International Brigades aged 17, been wounded at 19, imprisoned in occupied France, escaped and now, at 22, was training young communists to assassinate Germans from Hitlers occupying army. Georges, better known as Colonel Fabien, jumped into a first-class carriage, shot a naval warrant officer called Alfons Moser and ran off before the train left. A few weeks later, an Italian veteran, Spartaco Guisco, helped kill Lt Col Karl Hotz, the military governor of Nantes. Hitler responded with mass executions including of several brigaders, who had been locked up as a preventive measure.

Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces, was appalled. Fabiens group had ignored his commands. I order those in the occupied territory not to kill Germans, he said, fearing the mass retaliations that soon came. But resistance had shifted to a new level, and De Gaulle had to change his mind. Fabien died in an accident later in the war, and now has a Paris metro station named after him. He was one of hundreds of brigade veterans, including women, to join the French Resistance. More than 100 were killed, but on 19 August 1944, it was another brigader, Henri Rol-Tanguy, who ordered the French force of the interior (FFI), to rise against German troops in Paris. A week later Gen Dietrich von Choltitz formally surrendered the city to Rol-Tanguy and Gen Philippe Leclerc.

When the second world war broke out, it had been natural for brigaders to enlist. They had fought fascism for three years, but the task had not been completed. In Britain and the US, they were initially viewed with mistrust, not least because of the Nazi Soviet non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) of 1939, by which Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland. The former commander of the British battalion of the International Brigade, Tom Wintringham, approached the government with plans for a home guard. He was turned away, and instead founded a private academy of ungentlemanly warfare at the Osterley Park stately home, where brigade veterans and others taught people to make petrol bombs, ambush tanks and conduct guerilla warfare (the surrealist painter Roland Penrose taught camouflage).

Soon, however, it became clear that brigaders had extremely useful experience in warfare and formed a unique network throughout occupied Europe. Knox had emigrated to the US and was recruited by Gen Wild Bill Donovans Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the forerunner to the CIA, which ran guerrilla operations. Sent to liaise with Italian partisans, he bonded with the commander after realising that he was a former brigader and that they had fought together in Madrid. From then on, relations with the partisans were no problem, Knox said. In fact, several Italian partisan armies were led by brigaders, as were all four of Titos communist armies in Yugoslavia. The former brigader Aldo Lampredi was one of three partisans who executed Mussolini and his lover Claretta Petacci in 1945. Lampredis Beretta pistol delivered the final shots. A fellow brigader, Randolfo Pacciardi, became Italys postwar minister of defence. Even German brigaders fought against Hitler, with writers Erich Weinert and Willi Bredel shouting propaganda at snowbound Nazi troops from the ruins of Stalingrad. Since their aim was the defeat of fascism, the brigaders could finally savour victory in 1945.

On 13 November 1989, Erich Mielke stood before the East German parliament to answer questions in his role as head of the Ministerium fr Staatssicherheit, the state security ministry, commonly known as the Stasi. Mielke was 82 years old, a veteran of the International Brigades, and had run the notorious secret police for three decades. He was known as the master of fear, after turning East Germany into what the writer Anna Funder, in her book Stasiland, called the most perfected surveillance state of all time. The Berlin Wall had come down four days earlier, and the assembly no longer considered its task to be rubber-stamping everything. Mielke had not realised. Facing unusually tough questioning, he raised his arms and declared: I love all humanity! I really do! The assembly dissolved into laughter. Five days later he resigned. In 1993, he was jailed for the 1931 murders of two Weimar Republic policemen.

Brigaders played a remarkable role in East Germany after 1945, since they were among the few people the Soviets trusted. Heinrich Rau headed the German economic commission, its first de facto government. At one stage all three armed ministries defence, interior and state security were run by brigaders. Such figures also provided a narrative of heroic German opposition to Hitler, which East Germany also tried to claim for itself. Much the same happened wherever Soviets or communist partisans took control after the second world war. Ferenc Mnnich became prime minister of Hungary and machine gunner Mehmet Shehu was his counterpart in Albania for 27 years. Karlo Lukanov became Bulgarias deputy prime minister. In fact, the list of ministers, politburo members, generals, police chiefs and ambassadors who had been brigaders runs well into three figures. Many had been senior communists before the Spanish civil war, where exiled parties went en masse, seeking meaning for their existence. We needed Spain more than the republic needed us, quipped one Italian exile.

Their specialities, as soldiers, were defence and security. In the paranoid world of Stalinism, that also meant repression. Orwell had already spotted this in Spain, after the Marxist militia unit he fought for was banned and Barcelonas walls were suddenly covered with posters screaming from the hoardings that I and everyone like me was a fascist spy. That experience inspired Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yet most communist brigaders knew nothing about the horrors of Stalinism, and saw themselves as soldiers in a broad anti-fascist coalition. Stalin was still a saint, one explained later. Most eventually disabused themselves of that. Some, like Mielke, never did.

In fact, a good number were purged, precisely because they had fought in Spain and been in contact with the outside world. They featured in show trials from Prague to Budapest. I was a treacherous enemy within the Communist party. I am justly an object of contempt and deserve the maximum and the hardest punishment, Czech veteran Otto ling intoned before he was hanged after the notorious Slnsk trial. Hungarys foreign minister Lszl Rajk was executed in 1949 after a trial in which 16 of 97 defendants were Spanish veterans. A suspicious number of those purged were Jews. In Poland, many lost jobs and went into exile after a wave of socialist antisemitism followed Israels victory in the six-day war in 1967.

This persecution was mirrored, in a lesser way, in the US. The screenwriter and former brigader Alvah Bessie was one of the Hollywood Ten jailed in 1950 for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Communist witch-hunting was partially balanced out by Ernest Hemingway, a brigades devotee who made the fictional American brigader Robert Jordan the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Mostly, however, the cold war narrative won, not least because the brigades also produced several prominent Soviet spies. The most famous was Morris Cohen, who helped steal nuclear weapon blueprints from Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico.

When the cold war ended, history lurched into a new phase. Soviet communism was no longer a danger. Fascism was a distant memory. Leftwing domestic terrorism in western democracies from the Red Army Faction in Germany or Italian anarchists in Italy began to diminish, while rightwing terror grew.

On 18 July 2011, members of Norways Labour partys Workers Youth League attending a summer camp on the island of Utya unveiled a plaque to four young social democrats who had died in the International Brigades. The plaque bore poetry by Nordahl Grieg, a celebrated writer who had visited the brigades on the frontline. Four days after the unveiling, far-right gunman Anders Breivik reached the island, armed and posing as a policeman. He murdered 69 of those young people in the countrys worst massacre since the second world war, picking off teenagers as they tried to swim away. It was a tragic reminder that, even in the most advanced democracies, ideologies based on violence and tyranny refuse to go away.

For the families of brigade veterans, the fact that they fought one sort of tyranny, while some of them ended up serving another, complicates their memory. In Hungary, the niece of the writer, brigades commander Paul Lukcs (AKA Bla Frankl and Mt Zalka), wanted to defend her adored uncle. When she and her daughter contacted me, they highlighted that, before being killed in action in Spain, Lukcs suffered nightmares. The family destroyed his diary, which contained dangerously anti-Stalinist jottings.

Like several international brigades officers who were not of Russian origin, but had joined the Red Army and settled in Moscow, he might have returned only to be purged and shot. In Hungary, which experienced both fascist and communist rule, that conveniently puts him on the right side of history twice over.

Polands Institute of National Remembrance told me that it viewed brigaders as instruments of Soviet Unions imperialist politics and that some took part in forced and brutal introduction of communism in Poland. For communists outside the Soviet bloc, the contradiction is less intense. In his video testament, Virgilio Fernndez del Real (by then only one of three Brigaders still known to be alive) had proudly announced that I have been a communist since I was 14, before adding that we are not ruffians. For those brigaders who were not communists, or simply saw themselves as anti-fascists, it seemed even simpler. They had done their duty, even if others looked down on them for associating with communists. After an illustrious behind-the-lines career during the second world war, for which he won Frances Croix de Guerre medal, Bernard Knox applied to study for a classics doctorate at Yale (he later directed the Center of Hellenic Studies at Harvard). At the interview, he was told by a professor that his time in Spain made him a premature anti-fascist. Knox was dumbfounded.

How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-fascist? he recalled asking himself. Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? If you were not premature, what sort of anti-fascist were you supposed to be?

The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War by Giles Tremlett is published by Bloomsbury and available at guardianbookshop.com

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

This article was amended on 22 October 2020 to replace two photographs: the main image was of the Thlmann Group, which predated the International Brigades, and another showed George Orwell with the POUM, not with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as the caption purported.

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The contested legacy of the anti-fascist International Brigades - The Guardian

Vadim Ghirda / AP

Immigrants inside the United States can be denied the ability to adjust their status to lawful permanent resident on the grounds of membership or affiliation [emphasis added] with a Communist or totalitarian party, either foreign or domestic, according to new policy guidance issued Oct. 2 by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The directive refers to the immigrants as aliens.

This throwback to the McCarthy Red Scare era should be no real shock. (It is the Trump administration, after all!) In implementing this policy, our country would be banning immigrants in a way that clearly violates the Constitutions First Amendment: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. The Constitution does not carve out any exemptions allowing Congress to deny immigrantsor anyone else in the United Statesthis freedom.

The new directive from the Trump administration is a heartless and stupid rule with far-reaching, disturbing implications that could affect the lives of many trying to be legal residents of the United States immigrants who do have a belief in democracy, and who want to make a life in this country.

Being a communist is not against the law in the U.S. and the Communist Party, founded in 1919, is a legal, tax-paying entity. Legislation outlawing Communist Party membership has been ruled unenforceable by a series of court decisions. In a 1967 case, the Supreme Court ruled that one such piece of legislation, the Subversive Activities Control Act literally establishes guilt by association alone, without any need to establish that an individuals association poses the threat feared by the Government.

Contrary to the USCIS directive, communist is not synonymous with totalitarian. Across the globe, communist movements participate in political systems that could not even remotely be considered authoritarian nor totalitarian.

For example, the Communist Party of Spain, is part of a greater coalition of the Left that was democratically elected to office recently. The Japanese Communist Party is one of the largest communist parties that is not a ruling party. The JCP had 300,000 members as of 2017 and multiple members elected to the Japanese parliament and many more elected to local offices. Both the Spanish and Japanese parties are transparent, unarmed, with internal democracy practiced in their own organizations. The same, of course, can be said of the French Communist Party, the Communist Party of Greece, the multiple Communist Parties in Italy, and many others in Latin America. In Germany, the small Communist Party is constitutionally legal and there is a large communist caucus in the Left Party which has seats in the Bundestag.

It is telling that Japan, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany and almost all of Latin America have been through periods of true fascism and do not employ draconian measures to ban or limit the communists in any way. It seems strange for the USCIS to make such a point in the year 2020 to place a ban on communists becoming permanent residents. But rationality has never been a strong suit for this administration: we must assume darker, more nefarious purposes.

An election year ploy

This new policy serves two purposes for this administration. First it is a propaganda ploy lumping Communist Party membership with totalitarianism and implicitly signaling to the American public that communism represents a real and present danger that must not settle on our shores from the outside world. The USCIS is acting like an arm of Trumps reelection campaign by issuing such a directive in order to drum up the idea that there is a threat from Marxism in America today (and for an added scare factor, foreign communists could be trying to apply for residency).

Secondly, the absolute vagueness of the directive can be used to deny thousands their right to immigrate to the U.S. What defines a Communist Party? There are parties that are indeed communist with the name communist in the title of course, but there are also communist parties that do not have the title for various reasons. The Workers Party of Ireland is one example a communist party, through and through, though without being called one. The Socialist Labour Party of Croatia is another, the Workers Party of Bangladesh is another, and the list goes on and on.

There are other parties that have communist currents within them but are not communist. Would that be considered affiliation with a communist or totalitarian party under this new policy? The New Democratic Party of Canada, a soft left socialist party that has been at times an official opposition and the third largest party of Canada, has members belonging to Fightback, a Trotskyist and thus communist grouping. If a person was an active NDP member and moved to the United States, would that person be considered to have been affiliated with communists?

In a broader sense, if anyone who was an alien ever went to a BLM or anti-police protest, would that be considered affiliation with communists? It sounds ridiculous to anyone with more than two brain cells, but Trump and Trumps allies have said that Black Lives Matter is either a Marxist or communist movement. Would BLM be considered a Communist Party? It does have some Marxists and Communists involved though it is hardly a communist group. An alien who went to one protest could have Americas door slammed in their face for their exercise of the precious right of free speech.

All in all, this new policy is a combination of the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and the miserable nature of Trumps anti-immigrant directives. It will be used, abused, and directed at political enemies. Those trying to legally immigrate to the United States will be barred or have to jump through ridiculous legal hoops brought about by the worst president this country has seen in over a hundred years.

As with all op-eds published by Peoples World, this article reflects the opinions of its author.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration: Reds need not apply - People's World

In the waning days of 1981, an estimated fifty thousand Chicagoans followed a coffin draped in a Polish flag from the Loop two miles up Lake Shore Drive to the Polish Consulate. Polish flags waved from the crowd, some adorned with black ribbons of mourning mirrored by the armbands of marchers, while drummers provided a solemn accompaniment.

I remember looking back down Lake Shore Drive and it was just a swarm of people, says Richard Owsiany, who was carrying the coffin. I had never, ever experienced anything like that before. In front of Owsiany and the coffin bearers was a sign: In memory of the victims of communism in Polandmay their deaths never be in vain.

The demonstration honored victims killed since the imposition of martial law by Polands Communist regime two weeks earlier. The crackdown, initiated by the Prime Minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski under pressure from Moscow, followed a brief period of surprising openness in Poland.

After the ruling party raised centrally controlled meat prices in the summer of 1980, strikes broke out in every major industrial city in the country. (Increased food prices in 1970 and 1976 had also led to protests.) At the Lenin Shipyard in the port of Gdansk, workers formed a new union that they named Solidarity. Forced to bow to the widespread protests and struggling economy, the government made the unprecedented move of negotiating with workers in Gdansk, eventually leading to the registration of Solidarityinto which all the new unions across the country had coalescedon November 10, 1980. With an estimated ten million members, it was the first officially registered independent trade union in a Communist countryand an important step towards the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Everybody was optimistic and thought that things were changing, recalls Owsiany, a native Chicagoan who was president of the Polish Students Club at DePaul University at the time, and is now president of the Polish Museum of America. That optimism was cut short on December 13, 1981, when martial law was declared. Solidarity was formally banned the following year.

While Poles and Polish Americans in the United States didnt experience the repression directly, many of them were deeply involved in trying to end the Communist regime in Poland from half a world away. They took part in demonstrations like the one on Lake Shore Drive and sent food, medicine, and money to support Solidarity and its dissidents. Some even participated in hunger strikes.

A pennant dating from Solidarity leader Lech Walesa's visit to Chicago following the Round Table Agreement in 1989. Image: Courtesy Polish Museum of America

Many of these activities were organized by the Polish American Congress, which had been founded in 1944 with the explicit goal of working towards a free Poland. The Polish American Congress was the lead organization in the United States and in Chicago at that time, says Owsiany, who became involved with it after graduating from DePaul.

The Chicago division was led then by the powerful Alderman Roman Pucinski, who spearheaded many of the efforts against Polish Communism, including the Lake Shore Drive march. According to his obituary in the Chicago Tribune, he helped raise $1.5 million for Solidarity over the years. On New Years Eve of 1982, he connected directly to the movement when he spoke on the phone to its leader Lech Walesa (who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia that year), in a test of government restrictions. I almost fell off the phone when Lech answered the phone personally, he said.

Walesa wasnt the only dissident that Pucinski and the Chicago division of the Polish American Congress connected with; Owsiany also recalls clandestinely meeting the prominent opposition leader Jacek Kuron in Chicago. The Congress gave him cash it had raised to support the printing of dissident materials.

I think one of the most important things was that the Polish community in Chicago never gave up during that time period, Owsiany says. Every day, across the street from the [Polish] Consulate, there was always a group of people demonstrating. Their faith in change was predicated on the fact that they were doing something.

After the imposition of martial law and the banning of Solidarity, faith could be hard to maintain. For several years afterwards, it was a difficult and scary time, says Owsiany, noting as an example the murder of the dissident priest Jerzy Popieluszko. But in its religious manifestation, faith played an important role: the Catholic Church, under the leadership of the Polish Pope John Paul II, supported the fight against Communism, and encouraged the United States government to secretly subsidize Solidarity in its underground years.

The Polish American community also played an important role in pushing the United States to support Polish dissidents, as Walesa acknowledged through an interpreter in a 2009 interview with Chicago Tonight.(Watch it below.)The Polish Americans played an extremely important role, he said. They inspired the assistance of the United States as well.

So truly speaking, Solidarity was not only [a] Polish movement, it was an international Solidarity, he continued. And people from Chicago, among others, contributed to establishing this Solidarity.

Martial law ended in 1983, and Solidarity and other dissidents continued to work underground to overthrow the Communist regime, always through nonviolent means. The economy continued to falter, especially under international condemnation for the repression of Solidarity, and prices were raised again in 1987 and 1988. In 1987, the government took the unprecedented step of asking in a vote what types of financial reforms citizens preferred, but the options were all rejected.

Under the pressure of more strikes, the Communists invited Walesa to round table negotiations in 1989, and eventually agreed to reforms, including a new, free election. Despite the Communists attempt to rig the resultsnon-Party members could only run for less than half of the seats in one body of the assemblySolidarity routed them, winning 99 of 100 seats in the newly created Senate and all available seats in the other body. It was the first free election in any Soviet country.

The Communists were eventually forced to accept the overwhelming vote, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first post-Communist Prime Minister in August, 1989. Within several months, Polands Communist Party had been dissolved. Communist regimes in the Eastern bloc quickly followed Polands lead, culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

Its a beacon of change, says Owsiany about Solidarity and the end of Communism in Poland. Under a repressive regime, a nation of people organized themselves and stood up for what was right, basic human rights. I think it serves in todays world of what a nation can do to try to make change.

As the people of Polands neighbor Belarus continue to protest the disputed reelection of their longtime leader amidst a repressive security crackdown, its a beacon that remains relevantand inspirational.

Read more here:
The 40th Anniversary of the Polish Movement That Toppled Communism - And Chicago's Supporting Role - WTTW News

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Pope John Paul II and President Reagan worked together to bring an end to atheistic Soviet communism. The two had a divine plan to stop the Soviet empire that was engaged in a war on religion and individual liberties. The work of a pope and a president helped bring about the collapse of communism and yielded more freedom and opportunity for people all over the world.

During a trip to his native land in June 1979, the pope stood at the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and declared, In how many places in Europe and the world has [a fallen soldier] cried with his death that there can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map! The courage of Pope John Paul II to call out communism caught the attention of Ronald Reagan even before he was commander in chief of the United States.

As president-elect, Reagan reached out to the Vatican during the transition period following the 1980 election. Assassination attempts on both men delayed a meeting in 1981, but a personal note the president sent soon after the pope was shot defined his admiration of the holy father and his hopes for their close relationship.

In his letter, Reagan shared, Your heroism, and the universal outpouring of love and concern which it evoked, is proof that a single irrational act cannot prevail against the basic human decency which continues to inspire most people in most places. The qualities you exemplify remain a precious asset as we confront the growing dangers of the moment confront them with confidence and faith.

The two of them did as much as any others to not only provide freedom to the people of Poland but to win the Cold War and bring down the Soviet regime. Remembering the principles they followed to accomplish this provides an essential lesson for world leaders today.

The rise of democratic capitalism, along with the collapse of socialism, dramatically improved the living conditions of people all over the world. Data from the World Bank shows that the share of the global population living in poverty was 42.3% during the first year of Ronald Reagans presidency. By 2018, it had dropped to 4.8%. That means that nearly 1.25 billion fewer people were living in extreme poverty.

In 2018, the Brookings Institution released a report saying: For the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. By our calculations, as of this month, just over 50 percent of the worlds population, or some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered middle class or rich. About the same number of people are living in households that are poor or vulnerable to poverty. So September 2018 marks a global tipping point. After this, for the first time ever, the poor and vulnerable will no longer be a majority in the world.

Sadly, most Americans believe that global hunger has increased when just the opposite is true. The number of people living in starvation-level poverty has fallen by more than 80% since 1970.

Here are the facts: Democratic capitalism otherwise known as free enterprise or entrepreneurship is the best way to fight poverty and improve the lives of our citizens here in the United States and to help people in other countries around the world.

Freedom and capitalism go hand in hand. A society must adhere to the rule of law and property rights for a free enterprise system to work. The lack of that freedom explains the failures in Poland and the rest of the areas controlled by the Soviet regime during the height of Communist control. It also explains why countries like Venezuela are in trouble today. Socialist leaders promise power to the people but deliver poverty to the masses. Last year, 9 out of 10 Venezuelan citizens lived in poverty. Time and again, its been proven that freedom is essential for the masses to benefit from a free enterprise system.

There are legitimate concerns about the impact of the global pandemic on the poorest people and countries in the world. Pope Francis wrote about these concerns earlier this week. Capitalism, however, is not the problem. Rather, the severity of the disease is driving the negative impact. The most effective way to combat this global pandemic will be to allow free markets and the private sector to drive innovation in treatment and advancement in prevention. The principles of free enterprise will drive the discovery of new vaccines and effective therapies.

We should learn from the example of Pope John Paul II and President Reagan and the lessons they gave us. Among them, when governments work to provide free and open markets along with more individual liberties, they overwhelmingly reduce poverty. Freedom and prosperity go hand in and hand.

Scott Walker was the 45th governor of Wisconsin. You can contact him at swalker@washingtontimes.com or follow him @ScottWalker.

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When Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan engineered the collapse of communism - Washington Times

Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say? This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.

"So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.

"When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.

Many Christians would undoubtedly recognize the first two of the above paragraphs as part of the Gospel according to John. The third paragraph? After the Wuhan virus, the third paragraph might be the most despicable thing emanating from a nation run by unapologetic Chinese communist thugs.

Thugs who intend to rewrite Holy Scripture so it aligns with the Politburos sensibilities.

Chinas state-run Xinhua News Agency said late last year that Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Yang had presided over a meeting of so-called scholars and religious people from the grassroots level to discuss making accurate and authoritative interpretations of classical doctrines to keep pace with the times, reveals columnist Matthew Taylor King.

The full version of the Beijing Bible has yet to be released, but the above passage was made public last week as part of a textbook for Chinese high school students. According to the Roman Catholic news agency UCA, the textbook will be used to teach those students professional ethics and law, and the above passage is a moral example, explaining that obedience to the law at all costs is an absolute necessity.

Totalitarian government demands nothing less. And while many Americans should be rightly infuriated by this wholesale bastardization of Christian beliefs and values, they ought to be just as enraged by a progressive-controlled American education system that force-feeds our own students an equally contemptible bastardization of American values and history in the form of Common Core, Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and the LGBTQ agenda.

Just like Chinas Communist Party, progressives are dedicated to teaching children what to think, not how to think.

Xi Lian, a professor at Duke University Divinity School, illuminated the big picture, noting that the Chinese fear Christianity for three reasons. First, the religion is international, and thus links people in bonds of solidarity and affection that transcend national controls. Second, it is congregational, giving it the ability to mobilize a stable, reliable community capable of toppling dictatorships. Third, Christianitys transcendent vision [and] transcendent values present the Communist Party with an insuperable moral and ideological rivalry, in comparison to the CCPs Marxist-Leninist foundation, that many Chinese view as a spent force.

By contrast, Christianity is thriving: According to the book A Star in the East: The Rise of Christianity in China, co-authored by sociologist Rodney Stark and Xiuhua Wang, the number of Christians in China is increasing by 7% per year. Thus, between 1980 and 2007, the number of Chinese Christians increased from 10 million to 61 million. If that trend continues, there will be 295 million Christians in China by 2030.

Again, while that reality is anathema to Chinese totalitarians, Americans shouldnt be too smug. As Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted [recently], there is a strong parallel between Chinas efforts to create a new version of Christianity and those pioneered by Protestant liberalism in Europe and America, explains columnist Tyler O Neil.

They arent alone. Last Sunday, in his latest encyclical letter, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), Pope Francis asserted that the pandemic proved the magic theories of market capitalism have failed and should be replaced by a new type of politics promoting dialogue and solidarity. Pope Francis also revealed that he views the nation-state as an impediment to that agenda, adding, The limits and borders of individual states cannot stand in the way of this.

In short, the pope embraces the globalist agenda, couched in Christian terms. In doing so, he willfully ignores the reality that it wasnt the capitalists who unleashed a global pandemic and lied about it, exponentially increasing its devastation. It was the same Chinese communists intent on making a mockery of the Bible itself in pursuit of unassailable power.

Tragically, the popes current stand should surprise no one. In 2018, the Vaticans foreign minister stated that sinicization and inculturation defined as aligning Christianity with the Chinese communist worldview are the keys to Christianitys future in China.

In other words, communist sensibilities should trump Christian doctrine. How will that work? Perhaps the pope and other equally feckless Christian leaders should examine the realities of life as a Muslim minority in China, where government officials have turned that nations Uyghur Muslim population into de facto slave labor. Slave labor that produces goods for American multinational corporations, whose CEOs worship the god of market share which has reached a new high during the pandemic.

There is much more that could be said about this project, but the most important point for Americans to grasp is that the CCP has learned from the mistakes of the Soviet Union where religion is concerned, warns columnist Cameron Hilditch. Beijings co-opting, repackaging, and careful control of Christianity within Chinas borders is in stark contrast with the Soviets outright, implacable hostility to organized religion.

In America, under the banner of incrementalism, secular progressives have embraced similar efforts to undermine Christianity. And just as in China, their biggest obstacle is people of faith, who are routinely dismissed as bigots for rejecting that secularism in favor of religion.

Yet something revealing and quite timely just occurred. After Trump contracted COVID-19, the outpouring of hate from far too many progressives (with notable exceptions) revealed a stunning callousness impossible to obscure. That it happened so close to the election provides the electorate with perhaps the starkest choice among many regarding the nations future.

A constitutional republic can survive many things. Government-endorsed soullessness isnt one of them.

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China Rewriting the Bible to Align It With Communism - Patriot Post