The crucial fact that has been widely ignored is that what gave the anti-regime movements the strongest impetus to resist the seemingly irresistible communist power, and what the communists had tried to eradicate from the very beginning but, to their doom, failed, had little to do with liberal democracy. These were patriotism, a reawakened eternal desire for truth and justice, loyalty to the imponderables of the national tradition, and—a factor of paramount importance—religion. People rebelled because the regime deprived them of what they held the most precious.
