July 21-27 is Captive Nations Week. Congress designated in 1959 the third week of July as Captive Nations Week and asked the President to proclaim it annually. (Congress initially designated Captive Nations Week by itself in 1953). Joe Biden issued an executive proclamation on July 19. Captive Nations Week commemorates those countries that lay under the yoke of communism. Back in 1959, that included countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and east Asia. Subsequently, Cuba fell to communism.

As a Polish American activist, I remember taking part in events to mark Captive Nations Week. In the early 1980s, I recall how representatives of the Afghan community — then under Soviet invasion — would join us. Back then, the idea that the Captive Nations would one day again know freedom was considered far-fetched. The American intellectual establishment considered Soviet power intact and irreversible. George Kennan, lauded for his “insights” into the nature of Soviet communism, even tried according to one source to dissuade John Kennedy from proclaiming Captive Nations Week. He saw no reason to be provocative in committing the United States to what he thought was a policy of overthrowing communism. In one sense, he was correct: the United States rhetorically supported Central Europeans in the mid-1950s in their stands for liberalization after Stalin’s death (Poland, East Germany) but hung the Hungarians out to dry when they faced invading Soviet tanks in 1956.

As a Polish American, I knew my ancestral homeland would never acquiesce under the communist boot. Those who thought liberation was far-fetched ignored how Poland kept its aspirations to national freedom alive for 123 years, from 1795-1918, under Austrian, Prussian, and Russian occupation and partition. And while we had no idea what kind of miracle would be needed to restore freedom, we figured that was God’s problem and we’d do what we could to contribute to, you know, the grace-good works problem. God also made use of the grace-works problem by giving the Church and the world Karol Wojtyła, Pope St. John Paul II.

There were Polish bursts of freedom: 1956 in Poznan, 1970 along the Baltic coast, 1976 in Lublin, 1980 along the Baltic coast, resulting in the birth of Solidarity. There were setbacks: Polish traitors who did Russian dirty work by shooting workers from helicopter gunships in 1970 and who declared martial law against their own people in 1981. And let’s not forget the “unknown” forces that tried to murder John Paul on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima in 1981.

But then, 35 years ago this fall, came the glorious year and “autumn of nations” that ended communist dictatorships across Central Europe. Thirty-five years ago this summer in Poland I remember people watching television, glued to the debate in Parliament as the communists under Jaruzelski tried to maintain their rule after having been wiped out in the semi-free elections they allowed June 4. By August 24, the crack began: a non-communist government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki took charge and, for the first time since 1939, Poles were ruled by somebody who had some legitimacy.

That shock unleashed forces that, with God’s grace, spread throughout the region. The Hungarians had already cut a hole in their piece of the Iron Curtain. That hole led to East Germans, who used to vacation on Lake Balaton, extending their vacations permanently in the West. In response, the Honecker regime in East Berlin banned travel to Hungary, so East Germans sought asylum in the West German embassy in Prague. Demonstrations were starting across eastern Europe, including Monday night protests in all East German cities. Bulgaria was squirming. When Gorbachev made clear he would not prop up with tanks the East German communists, the writing was on the Berlin Wall. By November 9, Germans were discoing on top of that Wall… all arguably because Poles had jumped walls in Gdansk in 1980 to occupy the port and start Solidarność. Once the East German dam broke, the repressive Husak regime in Czechoslovakia faced the music of the Velvet Revolution in mid-November. By Christmas, Romania’s regime had toppled and the Ceausescus were shot. On December 30, Poland’s parliament restored the country’s name it bore when German and Russian invaders arrived in 1939: the “Republic of Poland.”

But the Spirit of ’89 was not over. The infection of freedom spread to the Soviet Union, first in the Baltic states that never acquiesced in their 1940 occupation, then to the Ukrainians and, finally, the Russians themselves. And while it seemed for a moment that the Russian putsch of 1991 might try to reverse those gains, they stood — and the geopolitical and civilizational success that the end of the USSR represented was finalized when party bosses from the key republics divided its carcass on December 8, 1991, and the hammer and sickle came down from over the Kremlin on December 25. Catholics will recognize the significance of those dates.

But 1989 was not a complete success. As Poles were voting, Chinese were protesting on Tienanmen Square in Beijing. But while Gorbachev kept his tanks on base, the Chinese Communist Party rolled them out in its cities. That’s why Captive Nations Week remains relevant. Freedom still needs to come to places like mainland China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba.

Let’s also not forget the Ukrainian people, fighting bravely to keep their freedom against a man who spent his life as a KGB agent in East Germany and who called the fall of the Soviet Union a global geopolitical “tragedy.” Back in the 1980s, a friend of mine, Dr. Thaddeus Gromada, led a gubernatorial commission in New Jersey to study how schools taught the history of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. He found a bunch of commonplace slogans in mainstream textbooks, e.g., the region is a “confusing babble of ethnic groups.” Well, nobody tells the countries of western Europe they’re a “confusing babble” of peoples, so perhaps the confusion lies more in authors’ and editors’ heads. When that report came out, noting there was little-to-no mention of places like Lithuania, Slovakia, Croatia, or Ukraine, I was asked by people, “do you consider them ‘nations?'” Well, yes. So, today, does the world. Most importantly, they considered themselves nations. Perhaps that’s why so many Americans were so confused in 1989 (and are confused about Ukraine today): Their list of freedom-eligible peoples and nations did not countenance all actual peoples and nations yearning to be free. Their pontifications were rather guided by the “wisdom” of Neville Chamberlin about “faraway… people of whom we know nothing.”

Learn about the Captive Nations! The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (linked here) is a good resource. And please pray for freedom. St. John Paul II and Bl. Jerzy Popiełuszko, the “Solidarity” priest murdered 40 years ago this October, might be good intercessors.