LUCYK: Encouraging young people to talk with survivors of socialism​on March 14, 2025 at 8:00 pm

Easter’s coming up and you can be sure that many young Canadians, fresh off of their first semester at university, will ruffle their relatives’ feathers at the Easter dinner table with glowing tales of this wonderful, beautiful, new thing they’ve discovered: Socialism.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Many college students have fallen for Marx and his various minions through the indoctrination of professors who speak fondly of socialism and communism, but have never lived in a socialist or communist country.

But socialism is not a new idea. It’s been tried and it has failed spectacularly and violently everywhere it’s been done.

Let’s get the raw numbers out of the way.

In the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics: Some estimate up to 20 million deaths — many through starvation — under one overweight, mustachioed socialist Stalin.

In the so-called People’s Republic of China: Another 40 million died under a similarly overweight, though bare-faced socialist Mao Tse-Tung.

The killing and starvation continue under modern socialist regimes – the United Nations estimates there were over 5,200 executions in Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela in 2018 alone. It’s clear that socialism kills.

Article content

Article content

If those numbers are a bit too abstract for your newly Marx-loving nephew or niece, they should listen to stories from people who lived under socialist regimes.

SecondStreet.org’s Survivors of Socialism project has spoken with many Canadians who fled socialist and communist countries all over the world.

One of them was Vancouverite Yali Trost, who lived in China before some economic reforms made it a less brutal (though still oppressive) dictatorship. She told us about how, in keeping with the regime’s One Child Policy, police would arrest pregnant women on the street and commit forced abortion. On top of that, free speech was nonexistent — you always had to worry about saying the wrong thing to your neighbour, lest they tell the authorities and you wind up in a jail cell.

Article content

Aime Despagne, a Toronto woman originally from Cuba, described how a friend of hers was tossed in prison for the crime of protesting their socialist government. While in a tiny jail cell, he was served meals from the same bucket he had to use as a tiny bathroom.

In Venezuela, nearly eight million people have fled the country due to a lack of food and the oppressive conditions. In 2018, media reported that food was so scarce that some Venezuelans resorted to eating rats.

Even in countries that are no longer socialist, the wounds of the past can be felt. During a recent trip to Lithuania, formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, I received dirty looks when I shared with Lithuanians that I had visited a Russian Orthodox Church in their country. Simply hearing the word “Russian” set them off — the memories of socialist oppression run deep.

Article content

This column barely scratches the surface. Many books could be (and have been) filled with the stories of those who have suffered and died under socialism. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago trilogy is an excellent place to start. But if the young socialist in your life doesn’t quite have the patience for such a long read, encourage them to speak with people who have lived in socialist countries.

Perhaps one of the tales of incredible human suffering will convince them that socialism’s flowery ideas are, quite simply, lies.

Dominick Lucyk is communications director for SecondStreet.org, a Canadian think tank 

Article content