Whereas the communist ideology is directly responsible for crimes against humanity; Whereas communist regimes have been directly responsible for crimes against humanity, mass starvations, and the murder of tens of millions of people; Whereas awareness of the crimes against humanity committed by communist regimes on behalf of communist ideology throughout the world must inform the minds of the people of the United States; Whereas Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in February 1848; Whereas The Communist Manifesto defines communism as the abolition of private property ; Whereas communists, in the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions ; Whereas the crimes of communists were justified by class struggle theory and the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat and used terror as a method to preserve the dictatorship; Whereas Vladimir Lenin led the October Revolution in 1918 that forcibly overthrew the social and political institutions of Russia and resulted in the establishment of the first communist government in history; Whereas the subsequent Red Terror that followed the October Revolution claimed the lives of approximately 1,500,000 Russians; Whereas Vladimir Lenin oversaw the mass campaign of violence of the October Revolution and the Red Terror with no moral qualms, and asked instead: How can you make a revolution without executions? ; Whereas the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (referred to in this preamble as the USSR ) was formally established in 1922; Whereas the USSR partnered with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, culminating in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939; Whereas the USSR coordinated an invasion of eastern Poland in 1939 according to the terms of a secret additional protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939