The Central and Eastern European region is unique, because it has experienced both totalitarian dictatorships. The majority of the people living here were under foreign rule from 1939 to 1991. Their sovereignty was taken away, they were exploited, and were chosen between friend and enemy based on race or class. They experienced world war, genocide and terror together under the umbrella of Socialism and its evil twin, National Socialism. In October 1944, Prime Minister Winston Churchill carelessly threw our region to Stalin, only to fake being amazed when the Iron Curtain had come down in the very place they have agreed with the Generalissimo!

We, who were once locked behind the Iron Curtain, carry a historical legacy, which increases a sense of belonging. Nearly a lifespan of trauma makes us more understanding of the suffering of other nations. The motto for Albanians was "Gjithmone Gati" (Always Ready), for us it was "those who are not with us are against us". You gave Cardinal Ernest Simoni to the world, we gave Prince Primate József Mindszenty.

A LEGITIMATE IDEOLOGY

We can't get away with confronting the crimes of communism. We owe it to the millions of victims, who were executed, crippled physically and emotionally. We owe it to our children. While in the Western world Nazism was thrown to the stinking dump of history, the debate on communist systems isn’t finished. On the contrary! It’s a legitimate ideology.

Even though more than three decades have passed since the fall of communism, it isn’t dead. Its Western representatives are there on university campuses, in the media and in politics.  The West still can't help squirming in its chair and look spectacularly bored when we refer to our experiences under communism. The blatant crimes of communism leave them unmoved. Jean-Claude Juncker, as President of the European Commission, unveiled a statue of Karl Marx with Chinese money, and in his speech, he excused Marx by saying that he wasn’t responsible for the crimes committed by those who claimed to be his heirs. Anna Donáth, a Hungarian left-wing MEP, with pride and excitement, relativized the past of his late grandfather, who was the "eyes and ears" of Mátyás Rákosi, the General Secretary and Prime Minister of the Hungarian Communist Party. The sublime communist aims still intoxicate many, yet, the Soviet model was a total dictatorship. From the beginning, it has shown repulsive features that are contradictory to its stated aims. Instead of abundance, it has created a shortage, instead of equality, it has doubled the distribution of rations to party cadres. Instead of fraternity, it has established a system of suspicion and generalized infiltration. Instead of freedom, it has woven a cobweb of the most absurd and humiliating constraints over society, which it has kept in fear by ruthless terror. It knew no moderation: its nature was born of the seed of human evil. That’s why it used violence against its perceived or real enemies. The class hatred, the logic of with-me-or-against-me, the disregard of moral laws, the inhumane behavior has resulted in the death of millions. "The exile from human existence, the torture, the starvation, the slave labor, the death by torture are the same in Recsk as in Dachau, and Kolima is no different from Mat’hausen in this respect. [...] Both the Gulag and the Nazi camp network were created for the same objective, and the millions of victims testify that they served their purpose", writes Imre Kertész, Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor.

Communist dictatorships not only committed unforgivable crimes against those they considered to be enemies, but also against their comrades. The system was based on exclusivity and unification, which politicized all walks of life: one ideology, one culture, one policy, one party, one leader, one family. The communists abolished private property and constantly attempted to suppress private sphere. The people, deprived of responsible decisions, were gathered into a mass-party and degraded into mass-people. Traditional ties were cut, traditions were eradicated. There was no shelter for the rootless individuals vulnerable to manipulation.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY

Dictatorships must be analyzed from a historical perspective. We need to understand their essence and make their nature clear. This is what the House of Terror Museum in Budapest and many others are doing worldwide. Communism and Nazism are like a deadly virus. To defeat it, we must analyse it, isolate it, and then develop the antidote. Once it has been deactivated, we can lock it up in museums and demonstrate to future generations that it’s the deadly disease we don’t want to see again! When Prime Minister Viktor Orbán opened the House of Terror Museum on 24 February 2002, he said the following: "We don't need museums like this to offer our children a personal experience of fear, terror, humiliation. We don’t need these museums to make them tremble. We want our children to grow up in Hungary knowing what those who came before them have endured. We want them to realize that freedom isn’t given for free.”

We, in the House of Terror Museum, have put these two dictatorships alongside each other, because they fit nicely next to one another! As Imre Kertész put it, "The one appears as a savior, and under his robe lies the devil; the other disguises himself as Satan, and is Satan indeed." But those who try to divide the two dictatorships, those who distinguish on the basis of undertone or logistics are the ones who speak of dictatorships in a false way! They are the very reason why we couldn’t, enforce historical justice against communist criminals, because the world lacked the courage to end socialism by condemning its crimes.

If we don’t keep a record of our losses, if we don’t make every effort to give name to the victims, we won’t be fulfilling our duty. We have a massive responsibility in a Europe whose Western half doesn’t know the price of freedom, the real face of dictatorships, doesn’t value national heritage, identity, family and religion.

We, who possess this invaluable heritage, must obey Arthur Koestler: "The torch of faith is extinguished, let us take up the candles of truth." / ADN

*Rajmund Fekete, PhD is the director of the Institute for the Research of Communism and an external fellow at the John Lukacs Institute for Strategy and Politics