The hard past

Even my research focused on the post-communist period - most precisely the first ten years of transition in Romania and Hungary - at the beginning of my research I focused considerably on the minority policies from the communist period. Even too much, I dare to say, and as a consequence of this situation, the first draft of my paper dedicated 45% to the editorial space to this time.

Beyond the relevance for understanding the origins of the current situation, it was as well - psychanalitically speaking - also an interest for understand a period I lived to, even shortly and whom I always regarded with a lack of any academic detachement: I simply hated what happened for more than 40 years.

Finally, I went beyond this memory blockage and was able to focus successfully on my topic.

During this intensive research, I had the occasion to read various memories written by former member of the nomenklatura who survived the transition. Some of them staying on the side of Ceausesc until the very last moment. They wanted now to share their memories, but without any critical perspective. All you got, is a never-ending lamentation, rephrased on hundred of pages about the ridiculous political transition, the former "comrades" who "betrayed" the communist values, they still believe in. Like grandparents, they, who neglected the fact that people were starving and were humiliated every minute of their life, they lecture about how they tried to change something or meditated about the values of communism while on vacation of various selected resorts strictly designed for the members of the ruling elite.

When the memories of the past

are different and contradictory and apparently as alive as the present.

Cultural patrimony, reconsideration of the past and history

in the case of the Altar of Zeus from Berlin.

Prague Declaration

The Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism was adopted more than one year ago, on the occasion of a conference held in Prague, June 2008. Among the founding signatories they are former dissidents and personalities, mainly from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States: Vaclav Havel, Vytautas Landsbergis, Jan Urban, Lukasz Kaminski or Joachim Gauck, former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi archives. By then until March 13 this year, they were gathered less than 1400 signatures of support - 1393.

This year, Europe is marking 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Declaration is mentioning also that the same period elapsed since "the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the killings in Romania". In the case of China, the communist country is branded as a succesful case-study of a capitalist economy plus neglect of human rights plus aggresive international affairs presence. In Romania, what happened 20 years ago is still a matter of dispute - was it a "revolution" or a "restauration" of a softer communist elite? One of the main actors of the 1989 events, Ion Iliescu - part of the former communist elite -, is still an important politician, with a word to say in one of the most important parties of the ruling coalition - the Social-Democrat Party (PSD). The former dissidents and public intellectuals are interesting for the media only when they assume a political position and the space devoted to critical thinking is almost non-existent, since the habits of the critical thinking as such are if not publicly rejected, at least ignored and considered an unuseful luxury. Communism, in its anti-globalization version, is again in fashion in Europe and elsewhere, mainly now in times of deep economic crisis.

Will this Declaration offer a coherent and administrative reconsideration of the communist part? Will it counter the nostalgia - of those who have heard about a communism, but never cued for food, for example - with a dosis of naked truth from those who fighted the lack of freedoms with the risk of their freedom? It is too late? How to make the public intervention powerful enough or appropriate, for determining a mobilization of the free and dedicatedt-to-thinking minds and how to make you voice heard to a wider audience?

Totalitarianism is a malady of the spirit. It might manifest in the communist, racist, nazi, fascist, extreme religious behavior. It is the rejection of the other and the psychological desire to eliminate all those we are different of us. All those who went through such experiences - and survived - have the duty to always tell their story. It is the damnation of a permanent alert state-of-mind. I agree a Declaration officially submitted is binding institutions to take effective steps - as to indict those who perpetrated the killings. But, it is by far not enough. The story have to be told over and over and over again, not as a bad-time story, but by rising awareness of the huge risks of the totalitarianism. It is the degree-zero of the tolerance against the perils of indifference, lack of civic involvement, intolerance and manipulation. Such previsions are part of the official statement of any accountable public intellectual, from the former other part of the Wall and elsewhere.

Eine Frau in Berlin

The documentary resources and the huge bibliography available worldwide regarding WWII and the period shortly after could offer the illusion that we know almost everything. Almost daily, if not weekly, we are reading information related to these events, still shoking for the Western European conscience. But, it could be almost similar to the sources available for the communism. In the period after the Cold War, as well as before, it is an infinite depository of knowledge regarding the smallest details related to this period. As for the communist regimes themselves, it's still not a satisfactory answer at the question how it was possible, despite the analysis and the experts, to predict the end of these regimes.

The diary of a young German woman experiencing three months - 20 April - 22 June 1945 - in the Berlin under the Russian occupation is a moving testimony and a living history of the new start of Germany. They are individual history of starvation, rapes by the Red Army soldiers, corpses lying in the remnants of buildings or on the street and destroyed houses. About the hurry to change the masters and the need to survive because, as in Curzio Malaparte's books, what matter for the human being is its "skin". The rest, is discussion at a warm cup of coffee. They are not too many stories as such and the author, by now, remains anonymous; we know she was an educated woman, who took her inner distance towards the Nazi regime, traveling often abroad and managing foreign languages - among which the knowledge of Russian will be a benefit. The Red Army entered many Eastern and Central European countries. They are stories already entered in the common memory about the high number of watches they used to ornate their hands, plus some additional alarm clocks hanging up on their chest. In the book, the author is simply explaining that in their country they are lacking the basic needs to have one for themselves. About the food they were using in huge quantities and, of course, the vodka instead of water.

But rape is another story. The instability of the feelings in these tormented times is impressive. First, they were the hordes of soldiers on the streets of what was once Berlin, treating any individual of feminine gender as a sexual object, with the exception of very very old and pregnant women. After not seeing each other long times, the first words exchanged were: "How many times?". Shortly, the women themselves decided that, in order to be safe, they needed to find a high ranking protector. The word is quite appropriate, because once the decision was taken, the woman is going on the street and the first who's more than a soldier will be her protector, offering not only safety of the assaults of other soldiers, but also food. The general feeling is that these times will never end and they "will continue to search for in the ruins as rats the rest" their lives. It's hard to imagine this now if we think about the powerful Berlin we're used to know, but it was the daily life only 64 years ago.

What you should read this book: As a testimony in itself, witnessing three months in the aftermath of the end of a regime who made millions of victims. It is history made up of various human histories, beyond the political ones. And, I think, I just discovered a definitory character of a historian: he/she needs to be coolblooded. Almost at every stage of the human histories, you have tons of accounts about death, war, conflicts, victims - innocent or not. Trying to put yourself in their skin will change you into a fanatic or a nut. Distance and reason, after understanding you constant starting point, are the constant ingredients for writing a good piece of academic work, whatever painful and bloody your theme is.

Memory, memories

One of the main issues arising when it is about Central and Eastern Europe is the management of painful memories. More or less frozen during the Cold War these memories of wars, lost territories, symbolical heroes became facts of daily life in post-communism. In fact, by the very fact that they were forbidden they get a privileged status and the critical evaluation of past was for a long time seen as an attack against core values. Lacking any references to start with, the Franco-German reconciliation model was a stereotype of political discourses on ethnic reconciliation in Romania, Hungary or Slovakia, fitting as well the objectives of this countries to be full parts of organisations as EU and NATO. But the historical facts and the recent and past memories were different and no external mechanism was able to provide a miraculous solution. The pressure of euro-atlantic integration was huge, indeed, but these countries, by themselves needed to find their own reconciliation solutions, first of all, by making history the duty of historians and not of the politicians.

The common trait shared with the other reconciliation models, as the Franco-German one for example, is the need to focus on a common future, for every citizen of their countries, whatever their cultural, gender and national background.
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