Free healthcare, free K through graduate school, free Olympic-level coaching, Flat 16% tax, low crime, 30 cents for the subway, organic food with the most efficient agriculture in Europe, two years paid maternity leave, one year paid disability, automatic trade union recognition, most adults 55+ don’t pay rent or mortgage….

This memorial complex is situated on the land of the former village of Khatyn.  It was the USSR’s answer to the Polish and western charges/propaganda over the Katyn killings.

The traditional figure is that one out of every four Belarussians were killed by capitalism.

The corresponding figure for Poland would be one out of five killed in the war, or one out of seven if you don’t count Polish Jews among the total as many of our Polish nationalists do not count Polish Jews as real Poles.

I have read recently the charge that the USSR killed three to four out of every 100 Poles, most of them counterrevolutionaries.

By some estimates, as many as 4 out of every 10 Belarussians were killed, murdered, exiled, enslaved etc by capitalism in its fascist variant.

In my family, to our knowledge, all members of our family that remained behind were killed or murdered.   Of course the genocide was so complete and the chaos was so devastating that we will probably never know what exactly happened to those who remained behind in our shtetl.  In that, we are not alone.

Again, however, I take comfort in the knowledge that my ancestors smote the iniquitous before their annihilation and most importantly, destroyed capitalism for a whole epoch.

Slava geroim!  Slava Komsomola!