FACES AND PLACES: The ghosts of communism (05/12/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

The ghosts of communism

Can there be any more contemptible news from Ukraine than the disclosure that Ukraine's left-wing parliamentary faction has proposed an alternative to the draft constitution developed by Ukraine's Constitutional Committee?

Signed by 125 parliamentarians - representatives of the Communist, Socialist and Agrarian factions - this second document is nothing less than the "Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic."

While other former Communist states are exorcising their Bolshevik brigands, Ukraine appears to be moving towards a reconciliation with the very people who plundered and pillaged the nation for 70 years.

In a book titled "The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism," Tina Rosenberg reviewed the endeavors of Polish, Czech and German national democrats to rid themselves of their Communist apparitions.

In February, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski went on trial for treason before the Polish Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Responsibility. He was the man, who, on December 13, 1981, instituted martial law and gave his army orders to crush the Solidarity labor movement. He argues that martial law saved the Polish people from a Soviet invasion.

That such a trial should take place in Poland is not surprising. No other country under Soviet control resisted Sovietization more vigorously. Poland was never collectivized, the Catholic Church was quite open and active, and Solidarity was a labor union that openly defied the authorities and eventually led the final struggle to bring down the Soviet empire.

In Germany, a group of aging former East German generals were recently assembled in Berlin's Moabit Court to face charges of being accessories to manslaughter. They were the authors of the infamous Order 101, which mandated shooting and killing those who attempted to escape over the Berlin Wall. Their defense is reminiscent of the Nuremberg trials. They maintain they were merely following orders from the Communist Party Politburo. Their trials follow the trials of some 13 border guards who employed a similar defense.

That such trials should be taking place in Germany is surprising. In the words of Ms. Rosenberg, "Communism was imposed from outside everywhere in Eastern Europe, but it was less resented in Germany..." There was little dissent in East Germany because there was little to complain about, according to one German cited by Ms. Rosenberg. "There were 45,000-mark interest-free loans to build your house. People had good jobs in factories and agricultural cooperatives." Hundreds of thousands of East Germans were involved in one capacity or another with the Stasi, "the most meticulously totalitarian spy organization to have graced the annals of history." Along with Bulgaria, East Germany was Moscow's most obedient servant.

Aside from a handful of dissidents associated with Charter 77, the Czechs, too, offered little resistance to the Soviets following the Dubcek era. Their model seemed to be the fictional hero of Jaroslav Hacek's book "The Good Soldier Svejk," a man who survives by going along, keeping his mouth shut and nibbling away at the system.

Life in Czecho-Slovakia was far easier than in Poland. "Nearly everyone had a car, an apartment, a cottage," Scarlett Reslova, a Prague biologist, told Ms. Rosenberg. In contrast to Poland, where three-hour lines for foodstuffs were quite common, Czecho-Slovak citizens rarely suffered shortages of meat, bread, milk, eggs, beer and other basics. As Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic's playwright/president explained, the average Czecho-Slovak citizen was willing to forego living in truth in exchange for a life of relative security and basic comforts. "We are all guilty," he said.

And yet, in contrast to Ukraine and other former Soviet-bloc countries, practically no one in the Czech Republic is yearning for a return to communism. On the contrary, prior to its break-up, Czecho-Slovakia initiated the most stringent de-Sovietization process in the region. In 1991, the first freely elected Czecho-Slovak legislature passed the so-called "lustrace" (purification) law designed to purge former Communist officials and their collaborators from public positions in the country's fledgling democracy. Few high-level Communists have been "purified" as yet and there has been much discontent with the way the process has worked. Due to expire this year, lustrace has been extended to the year 2000.

And what about Ukraine? No lustrace. No indictments. No trials. No effort to rid the nation of the stench of communism. Ukraine's defilement continues and the entrenched left grows more audacious by the day.

When will Ukraine rid itself of the ghosts of communism? As I wrote in an earlier column, The Civil Liberties Commission of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress published a monograph titled "War Crimes: A Submission to the Government of Ukraine on Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes" in 1992. Written in English, Ukrainian, Russian and French, the monograph was presented to every member of the Ukrainian Parliament as well as high-ranking government officials. Among other recommendations, the submission suggested that "the Ukrainian government form a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes" committed on Ukrainian soil and that the commission be patterned after the royal commission in Canada. Following the establishment of such a commission, Ukraine was urged to approach other governments - Canadian, Australian, British, Swedish, German and American - for assistance in the form of materials from their archives. Crimes by Nazis as well as Bolsheviks were to be reviewed. To date, Ukraine has done nothing more than join forces with the Wiesenthal Center in Israel in demanding the extradition of Bohdan Koziy from Costa Rica.

What about all of the Soviet criminals in Ukraine? When will their turn in the prosecution box come? Can Ukraine afford to forgive and forget its Soviet past and those who devastated it so horribly? When will the perpetrators of the Chornobyl disaster be brought to justice?

"Whoever controls the past controls the future," George Orwell said. "Nations, like individuals, need to face up and understand traumatic past events before they can put them aside and move on to normal life," writes Tina Rosenberg. "A nation's decision about how to face its past are central to the challenge of building real democracy."

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