Communist parties
Modified 24 April 2009
Workers of the world, unite! Proletarian comrades,
throw off the shackles of your capitalistic oppression!!
Death to the bourgeuosie!!! You get the point —
Commies, Reds, Bolshies, Stalinists, Trotskyites,
Maoists, etc. After the stunning successes of North
Korea and the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia,
they figure the rest of us want to join in. One of many
ironies is that several of the U.S.-based pages carry
advertising. They espouse violent communist
revolution yet promote capitalist ventures, so it's not
as if we should expect much logic from them....
Fun fact about communist heroes — most of them
used pseudonyms.
-
Che Guevara,
really
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna —
-
Born into a prosperous family,
spent his youth traveling on holidays
throughout Latin America.
Trained as a physician, which came in
handy when torturing captives.
Played prominent role in Cuban revolution,
spent 1965-1966 in Congo organizing
Patrice Lumumba Battalion.
Killed in Bolivia in 1967.
-
Vladimir Lenin,
really
Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov —
-
Stayed safely outside Russia during
the revolution,
entered by private train from Helsinki
once it was safe.
-
Josef Stalin,
really
Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili —
-
Studied for priesthood in Georgian Orthodox
Church (this quite obviously didn't take).
Changed his name to the Russian for
``Joe Steel''.
Learned Russian as a second language,
never lost Georgian accent.
Killed more non-combatants
then Hitler.
-
Leon Trotsky,
really
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein —
-
Jewish heritage was not a good thing
under Stalin
(or pretty much any Soviet leader),
so he needed a new name.
``Trotsky'' was derived from a German
term for ``defiance''.
Exiled and sentenced in absentia,
killed with an ice ax by one of Stalin's
agents in Mexico City in 1940.
-
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov,
really
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skriabin —
-
Changed his name to ``Of the Hammers'',
one of the few leading Bolsheviks actually
in Russia in the February Revolution of 1917.
Credited with inventing the
``Molotov Cocktail''.
Negotiated the initially secret
Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact
between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939,
which led to the forcible annexation of Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940, but
which fell apart when Germany invaded in 1941.
Expelled from the Communist party in 1964,
reinstated in 1984 before dying in 1986.
-
Fidel Castro,
really
Fidel Castro Ruz —
-
Fidel and his brother Raul were the
bastard children of the married Angel
Castro y Argiz and his cook,
Lina Ruz Gonzalez.
OK, not exactly a pseudonym...