It’s difficult to explain how much the world has changed in 25
years — and for the better. Those who lived through December 1981
would be well served to pause and give thanks for the
differences.
In December 1981, much of the world lived in totalitarian
darkness. This was captured at the time by Freedom House, the group
begun by Eleanor Roosevelt and today headed by freedom fighter Nina
Shea. Freedom House published its map of global freedom, which
showed the world’s free nations in white and unfree nations in
black. Nearly all the great Eurasian land mass was colored black,
from the western border of East Germany, through eastern Europe and
the massive spaces of the Soviet Union, and on to the huge terrain
of China, and still further down to Vietnam and the South China
Sea. The contrast was pointed out by a presidential candidate who
hoped to transform the darkness: “If a visitor from another planet
were to approach earth,” said Ronald Reagan, “and if this planet
showed free nations in light and unfree nations in darkness, the
pitifully small beacons of light would make him wonder what was
hidden in that terrifying, enormous blackness. We know what is
hidden: Gulag. Torture.” Reagan noted that “the very heart of the
darkness” was the Soviet Union.
What was that totalitarian darkness like? It sought the
persecution and even annihilation of entire classes and groups of
hated people. According to the 1999 work by Harvard University
Press, The Black Book of Communism, at least 100 million
people were killed by Communist governments in the 20th century, a
conservative figure that we already know underestimated the total.
(We now know, for example, that Mao Tse-Tung alone killed 70
million in China, and Soviets authorities like Alexander Yakovlev
maintain that Stalin himself killed 60-70 million in the USSR.) If
one combined the total deaths in World War I and World War II and
multiplied them by two, they still did not match the deaths by
Communism in the 20th century.
These governments robbed individuals of the most basic rights:
property, speech, press, assembly, the right to life. Communists
had a particular antipathy for religion. Of special attention this
time of year — in December — Communist governments went so far as
to inspect houses in search of Christmas trees, as they tried to
also strip the right to celebrate the birth of Christ.
THIS HATRED OF RELIGION WAS imbedded in Marxism-Leninism. Marx had
called religion “the opiate of the masses” and said that “Communism
begins where atheism begins.” His chief disciple agreed: “There can
be nothing more abominable than religion,” wrote Vladimir Lenin,
the founder of the Soviet state, in a letter to Maxim Gorky in
January 1913. Religion, howled Lenin, was “a necrophilia,” akin to
a virulent form of venereal disease. Once he was in power, Lenin
resolved to do something about it, ordering “mass terror” against
the religious: “The more representatives of the reactionary clergy
we manage to shoot, the better,” he decreed.
Lenin especially detested Christmas. On December 25, 1919, he
issued an edict directed at all levels of Soviet society: “To put
up with ‘Nikola’ [the religious holiday] would be stupid — the
entire Cheka must be on the alert to see to it that those who do
not show up for work because of ‘Nikola’ are shot.”
Fast forward to Christmas 1981, when the Communist world still
despised religion. That year in Moscow, “church watchers” retained
their regular duties: sitting in the back of chapels taking notes
on those “stupid people” (as government propaganda described them)
who entered to worship. By 1981, only 46 of the 657 churches
operating in Moscow on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution were
permitted open, though they held closely monitored and controlled
services. In one of the Soviet republics, the Ukraine, the
government celebrated the nativity according to Marx and Lenin.
Political commissars hijacked traditional Christmas carols and
purged them of Christian references. Lyrics such as “believers”
were changed to “workers”; the time of the season became October,
the month of the glorious revolution; rather than the image of
Christ, one song extolled “Lenin’s glory hovering”; the Star of
Bethlehem became the Red Star.
In fact, the red star replaced the traditional star atop the
occasional Christmas tree erected in the Communist world, where the
Christmas tree was renamed the New Year Tree. This was part of the
secular Great Winter Festival that replaced the traditional
Christmas season, celebrating the mere advent of the New Year. Said
Ukrainian Olena Doviskaya, a church watcher and a teacher, who was
required to report students who attended Christmas services: “Lenin
was Jesus. They wanted you to worship Lenin.”
The prospects for shining light upon that darkness seemed grim
in 1981. The Soviets were on the rise, having added 11 satellite or
proxy states since 1974.
The new man in Washington, President Ronald Reagan, was sure he
could reverse this. He had survived an assassination attempt in
March 1981, sure that Providence had intervened to spare him for a
larger purpose: to defeat Soviet Communism. Reagan was especially
hopeful that the tide could begin in Poland, the most recalcitrant
of all the Soviet bloc states, where the Communist war on religion
utterly failed.
And just then, on December 13, 1981, the lights were dimmed
again. At midnight, as a soft snow fell lightly on Warsaw, a police
raid commenced upon the headquarters of Lech Walesa’s Solidarity
labor union. The Polish Communist government, consenting to orders
from Moscow, declared martial law. Solidarity’s freedom fighters
were shot or imprisoned. The cries of liberty were being snuffed
out in this most pivotal of Communist bloc nations. That was what
the world faced 25 years ago this month.
BUT THEN CAME A MOMENT of hope forgotten by history.
Ten Days later, on December 23, with Christmas only two days
away, Ronald Reagan connected the spirit of the season with events
in Poland: “For a thousand years,” he told his fellow Americans,
“Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious
faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous
Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.” He
made an extraordinary gesture: The president asked Americans that
Christmas season to light a candle in support of freedom in
Poland.
This idea was kindled by a private meeting Reagan had with the
Polish ambassador, Romuald Spasowski, and his wife, both of whom
had defected to the United States the previous day. The ambassador
and his wife sat in the Oval Office. His wife was very upset. Vice
President George H. W. Bush put an arm around her shoulders to
comfort her. The ambassador said, “May I ask you a favor, Mr.
President? Would you light a candle and put in the window tonight
for the people of Poland?” Immediately, Ronald Reagan rose and
walked to the second floor, lighted a candle, and put it in the
window of the dining room.
That candle might have brought to mind those special candles lit
after Mass by a young Karol Wojtyla, a Pole from Krakow who was now
Pope John Paul II. Then and now, they burned bright for Russia’s
conversion.
Of course, the atheistic Communist press was not quite so
sentimental. It was enraged by Spasowski’s request, calling him a
“slanderous, dirty traitor.” The slightest American invocation of
God’s side set the Soviets seething. “What honey-tongued speeches
are now being made by figures in the American administration
concerning God and His servants on earth!” fulminated a
correspondent from Moscow’s Novoye Vremya. “What verbal
inventiveness they display in flattering the Catholic Church in
Poland. Does true piety lie behind this?”
The Soviet press, maybe because it was never driven by religious
piety itself, doubted that such could be a sincere Reagan
motivation. The next day, on Christmas Eve, propagandist Valentin
Zorin dashed before the Soviet TV cameras to question the “rather
doubtful Christmas gift” Reagan had just given to Americans.
UNDETERRED BY SOVIET RAGE, Ronald Reagan and a core group of cadres
— some of whom passed away this past year, such as Caspar
Weinberger and Jeane Kirkpatrick — remained committed to
liberating the people of Poland and all of the Soviet empire.
Without going into the debate over where and how they succeeded —
that’s another article — suffice to say that the world changed
dramatically by the end of the decade, and in precisely the way
they had hoped.
In 1980, according to Freedom House, there were 56 democracies
in the world; by 1990, there were 76. The numbers continued an
upward trajectory, hitting 91 in 1991, 99 in 1992, 108 in 1993, and
114 in 1994, a doubling since Reagan had entered the Oval Office.
By 1994, 60% of the world’s nations were democracies. By contrast,
when Reagan lamented the lack of freedom in the mid 1970s, the
number was below 30%. Few presidents got so much of what they
wanted.
There has been an explosion in freedom worldwide since the
1980s. This democratic transformation is one of the great stories
of modern humanity, and one of the least remarked upon, as
high-school texts — among numerous other sources — are completely
silent on the subject.
This is a truly global blessing that transpired in the lifetimes
of most of us. Unfortunately, many of us Americans are not good at
counting our blessings or remembering our history. A look back at
25 years ago this month can help us to be grateful for what we
have, especially at Christmas time, when we pause to remember the
ultimate source of light that conquers the darkness.
