This lecture-style course is an introduction to crimes committed by Communist regimes over the past century. Unlike the human rights crimes of Nazism, which are  - as they should be - well known and covered substantially in public schools, the crimes committed by Communist regimes are not well known in the West. And yet, more than a billion people, living on almost every continent in the world, have lived under Communist dictatorships over the past century. Collectively, those regimes have murdered more than 100 million people. Countries affected include Russia, all of Eastern Europe, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, Angola, and Ethiopia. The impact and legacy of these human rights crimes have thus touched very widely on humanity as a whole.

In this class, we will cover some basics of this history, including:
* These governments were formed by Marxist-Leninist Parties. We'll look at the key tenets Lenin and his successors used to justify dictatorship.
* The history of the Russian Revolution and the Holodomor under Stalin.
* The Great Leap Forward in China.
* The Killing Fields in Cambodia

These constitute some of the worst crimes against humanity in human history. This class is thus not for sensitive learners.