It would be a great tragedy if Communism disappeared from the earth without leaving behind an indelible memory of its horrors. Communism was not essentially about espionage, or power politics, or irreligion. Rather it was a grand theoretical synthesis of totalitarianism... a theory which millions of people experienced as the practice of murder and slavery.
The roots of Communism lie squarely in the works of the philosopher Karl Marx. But at the same time, as we shall see, the tradition of Czarist absolutism also became an important source of Communist inspiration. The first exhibit to open explores the Marxist and Czarist origins of the Communist movement.
