Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, advocates that we make November 7 (today) the Victims of Communism Day. I agree.

I can’t think of much to add to what he said and I can’t say it better. Here are two of his key paragraphs:

The Soviet Union did not have the highest death toll of any communist regime. That dubious distinction belongs to the People’s Republic of China. North Korea has probably surpassed the USSR in the sheer extent of totalitarian control over everyday life. Pol Pot’s Cambodia may have surpassed it in terms of the degree of sadistic cruelty and torture practiced by the regime, though this is admittedly very difficult to measure. But all of these tyrannies – and more – were at least in large part part variations on the Soviet original.

And:

The Black Book of Communism estimates the total number of victims of communist regimes at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny.

The picture above is of bones of tortured prisoners, Kolyma Gulag, in the USSR.