Captive Nations Week

Captive Nations Week is an annual official observance in the United States aimed at demonstrating solidarity with the "captive nations" under the control of authoritarian governments.

Public Law 86-90 which establishes Captive Nations Week

Background

Initially, the week was aimed at raising public awareness of the Soviet occupation of Eastern European countries and of the Soviet imposition of support to Communist regimes in other regions of the world.

The week was first declared by a Congressional resolution in 1953 and signed into law (Public Law 86-90) by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959. Every successive U.S. President, including President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, has declared the third week of July to be Captive Nations Week. During the Cold War, events of the Captive Nations Week have sometimes been attended by US Presidents, mayors and governors.[1][2][3]

Present day

After the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the week is also dedicated to supporting the newly democratic governments of these countries[4]

Diasporas from undemocratic countries participate in events of the Captive Nations Week to draw public attention to problems with democracy and human rights in their respective home countries. Members of the Belarusian American community, as representatives of the last authoritarian country in Eastern Europe, have been constituting a major part of the participants of Captive Nations Week marches in the recent years[5] In 2019, among the topics of the Captive Nations March has been solidarity with Oleg Sentsov and other Ukrainians held captive by Russia at that time.[6]

In 2019 Marion Smith, Executive Director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, has called for a resurrection of the Captive Nations Week because of a number of countries like China, Vietnam, North Korea or Laos still dominated by authoritarian and totalitarian Communist regimes and Ukraine being target of a Russian military aggression.[1]

Criticism

The American foreign policy expert George Kennan, serving at the time as ambassador to Yugoslavia, sought unsuccessfully to dissuade President John F. Kennedy from proclaiming the week on the ground that the United States had no reason to make the resolution, which in effect called for the overthrow of all the governments of Eastern Europe, a part of public policy.

Russian emigres to the United States (specifically representatives of the Congress of Russian Americans) argued that the Captive Nations Week was anti-Russian rather than anti-Communist since the list of "captive nations" did not include Russians, thus implying that the blame for the oppression of nations lies on the Russian nation rather than on the Soviet regime (Dobriansky's allegedly Ukrainian nationalist views were named as the reason for this).[7] Members of the Congress have campaigned for nullification of the Captive Nations law.[8]

Nevertheless, in his official address on the Captive Nations Week in 1983, President Ronald Reagan quoted Russian dissident writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Herzen.[2]

Group of prominent American historians issued a statement claiming that PL 86-90 and the Captive Nations Week was largely based on misinformation and committed the United States to aiding "ephemeral" nations such as Cossackia and Idel-Ural.[9]

See also

References
  1. Communism is making a comeback; so should Captive Nations week, by Marion Smith - Miami Herald, July 12, 2019
  2. Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Annual Observance of Captive Nations Week by PResident Ronald Reagan, 1983 - Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
  3. MT530A - Ceremony for Captive Nations Week - July 21, 1989 - Address by President George H.W. Bush at the Ceremony for Captive Nations Week - July 21, 1989 (video)
  4. Presidential Proclamation -- Captive Nations Week, 2012 by President Barack Obama
  5. Беларусы на „Маршы паняволеных народаў у Нью-Ёрку [Belarusians at the Captive Nations March in New York] - Novy Chas, 17 July 2017
  6. На Маршы паняволеных народаў у Нью-Ёрку падтрымалі Алега Сянцова [Oleg Sentsov supported at the March of Captive Nations in New York] - Radio Svaboda, 14 July 2019
  7. Tsygankov, Andrei (2009). Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy. Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-230-61418-5.
  8. Anatoly Bezkorovainy (2008). All Was Not Lost: Journey of a Russian Immigrant from Riga to Chicagoland. AuthorHouse.
  9. "A Statement on U.S. Public Law 86-90". Russian Review. 20 (1): 97–98. 1961. JSTOR 126589.

Bibliography


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