During the opening ceremony for the Sochi Olympics NBC heralded the Communist Revolution as a “pivotal experiment” in world history.

Sure, if by pivotal, NBC meant something that proved once and for all that communism was a horrible failure that cost tens of millions of human lives, and most of a century of economic and scientific growth in an enormous section of the planet. Here are a just few reasons NBC’s glorifying rewrite of communism’s history is outrageous:

1. As many as 61 million people died under Stalin’s watch, alone. The vast majority of them for political reasons.
2. 18 million political dissidents passed through the Soviet gulags, and an estimated 1.7 million were killed, simply for having differing political views
3. 3-5 million Ukranians died in the forced famines
4. The Bolshevik revolutions and general spreading of the Red Terror during the first half of the 20th century caused the rise of many communist dictator regimes including Pol Pot of Cambodia (estimated death toll 3 million, or over a third of the population), Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” that killed as many as 40 million by forced famine in four years, and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung whose family still reigns over one of the planet’s most poverty-stricken and brutal regimes to this day.
5. A centrally-planned economy that eventually had to be disbanded bit by bit in favor of a freer market because (surprise!) even the most glorious leaders have a knowledge problem.
6. NBC would be shocked to learn that the media was thoroughly squashed during Soviet rule. Their contributors’ opinions would either be eliminated, or turned into part of the larger state propaganda machine. Freedom of Press was nonexistent.

So, if by pivotal, NBC means horrible, tragic, costly, and should never be repeated again, then ok. But based on the history of NBC and its affiliates, their past glorification of all things centrally-planned and communist, we have a pretty clear picture of their meaning.