The Captive Nations Handbook [1966]

FOREWORD
A Congressional Committee required months of study and painstaking investigation to understand fully the plight of the captive nations. We quote from the Report of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression: “There is nothing in the background of the average American that will help him understand . .. forced labour camps. Only after careful study of testimonies and written depositions from people who had been in the camps and survived the misery of mass deportations, did the members of the Committee come to believe the facts presented here as true.”
The 83d Congress directed a bipartisan Select Committee to determine the “ways and means by which the international Communist conspiracy fastened its hold on once free nations” and “what happens to people living under Red rule.” We have condensed in this booklet some of the vital findings and conclusions of that Select Committee.
Except as otherwise credited, the first part of this brochure is based entirely on the Committee’s publication, House Report 2684, and the Senate document, The Soviet Empire: Prison House of Nations and Races, much of it verbatim quotation. In the section on individual nations, Select Committee material is in italics. Titles of books and periodicals are in italics. Other factual material is based on the specific source credited, or on one of the sources listed in the Bibliography.
The amount of space devoted to an individual nation is not indicative of its relative importance. Every captive nation is vitally important. The essential thing is that freedom and independence be “achieved for all the captive nations of the world,” and that all of the people have the elementary right of free men, “to make a free choice.” Extra space has been allotted to those nations which were not included in the investigation of the Select Committee. General information regarding all nations is available in standard information sources. Most of the material printed here is not.
If you write to your Congressman, he will tell you that the two government publications noted above are out of print. You may want to ask him: “Why are they out of print?” You may want to ask him if he has read the copies in the Library of Congress. You may even want to urge all your Congressmen to support vigorously all moves in the Congress to establish a permanent Captive Nations Committee. Such a Committee would be an invaluable aid in establishing sound foreign policy.
THE CAPTIVE NATIONS COUNCIL 328 Third Avenue West Seattle, Washington