I
am still young so I can't remember what happened in about 1940. But
my parents told me about communism in Lithuania and other countries.
Now I will write what they said. The peoples of the Soviet Union live
at a level of brutish primitiveness that we can hardly imagine. An exhibition
called "The Soviet Paradise" has recently visited Berlin and
other large cities, trying to show the nature of life in the Soviet
Union through original materials. Normal and naive people can hardly
believe it. One often saw groups of civilians discussing the matter
heatedly, who then had to be told by a few wounded veterans of the Eastern
Front that reality in the so-called workers' and peasants' paradise
was even worse than what was presented. It is significant that the campaign
against the Soviet Union has not brought back any fond memories of communism.
None of our soldiers have seen any evidence of an agreement between
the theory and practice of Bolshevism. None has returned from the East
as a communist. The veil has been removed. Bolshevism is not a danger
for us any longer. "Post-Communism" is one of those strange
terms that describes an era by what preceded it rather than by what
it actually is. Still, the decade since Communism fell in Central and
Eastern Europe can easily be seen as a single unit for the Czech Republic,
and as the era was rather ambiguous and multidirectional for the country,
the term "post-Communism" is probably as good a name as any
to define those ten years. Post-Communism brought with it much rethinking
of democracy and free markets, as intellectuals from both East and West
debated about what really made a free, tolerant and democratic society.The
cynic would say that the answer remains unknown, as none have ever been
created, but the reality of the situation across Centraland
Eastern Europe shows quite clearly that some countries - Hungary and
Poland, for example - are certainly more free and democratic by almost
whatever standard one chooses than others, say Serbia or Belarus.
To overcome these
difficulties, many called for a stronger "civil society" - that layer of society that is run neither by the state nor the family - and a broad volunteer sector. By re-enforcing community spirit and civic involvement, a strong civil society was supposed to strengthen the nascent democracy. However, the trouble for the country's thinkers has always been how to create this essentially grass-roots activity from above. As a solution to society's "trauma of Communism," civil society was inherently flawed.But the argument that all today's problems can be blamed on the old regime is wearing a bit thin ten years after the collapse of that regime. How long does the legacy of Communism really last? Are the Central European intellectuals right to continue emphasising "civil society" as a remedy for a post-Communist environment? Finally, and most importantly, when does "post-communism" end? As we are approaching the end of the Millennium, it is clear that Communism has been one of the two worst curses of mankind. While its twin brother Fascism has been critically evaluated, condemned, and its major perpetrators punished (e.g. Nuremberg Trials), so far nothing of this sort happened to Communism which is responsible for even greater (sometimes far greater) numbers of victims according to many international analysts. This is not only a major gap in social/historical analysis but an injustice of historical proportions as well. United States never recognized the illegal Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Throughout the half century of Soviet occupation the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) maintained diplomatic and consular representations in the United States. The U.S. Congress was a beacon of hope for these occupied countries. Congress spoke out for freedom, liberty, justice, self-determination and always mentioned the criminal Soviet misdeeds in the Baltics. The U.S. Congress also remembered the Baltic countries on their national days and on the days of forced Soviet deportations where a large segment of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian population was forcefully deported to Siberia. Early in the fifties, Congress investigated the communist take-over of Lithuania. The investigative report detailed the take-over and concluded that: "The purpose of this report is to telescope the essentials of the history of Lithuania and its people; including the period of Communist take-over and occupation of that nation. It is hoped that this report will help the American people to understand better the nations and people enslaved by communism and thereby to more fully appreciate the true nature, tactics and final objectives of the criminal conspiracy of world communism."
Viktorija Simoliunaite 10a, Secondary
School "Versme" in Kaunas, Lithuania Coordinators
Ruta Jukneviciene & Marija Buciene
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Last update March, 13, 2001
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