May Day, May first, coincidentally my brother’s birthday, is also Labor Day for the European Left. However, May Day was also the time when the alleged Worker’s Revolution states would parade around a bunch of tanks in front of their leaders in mandatory “spontaneous” demonstrations of how much they loved having it so easy–or be shot.

Catallarchy (link via Marginal Revolution) has a roundup of essays to commemorate the real meaning of May Day and pay tribute to the victims of Those Who Spoke for the Workers but Would Not Let Them Speak’s putsch.

A sample:

Among the victims shipped out to Kolyma were those raised a voice against communism, refused to join a farm collective, were labeled �wreckers� in factories that did not meet production quotas, were caught setting aside a small amount of wheat to feed their starving children, Russian soldiers exposed to �foreign� ideas as prisoners of war, kulaks, and any �inconvenient� Communist Party member suspected by Stalin of being an enemy. Foreign nationals, including Poles, Germans, Jews, Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazaks, Georgians, Armenians, Turks, Latvians, and Finns, among others, were deported in mass numbers during Stalin�s various purges. Although the exact numbers have been difficult to quantify, historians estimate up to 3 million people died in the Kolyma camp.

from Kolyma: Land Of The White Death by Jonathan Wilde.

But remember, they just wanted what was best for the Working Class and that makes it just A-OK, and certainly shouldn’t be compared to Hitler, who wanted what was best for another arbitrary and ill-defined group that considered itself oppressed.