Polonia mon amour

Martin Šimečka on coming to terms with the communist past
Dilema Veche – Romania
After the end of the socialist dictatorships there was hope that Central Europe would be able to contribute new ideas to the Western world of politics, Slovak journalist Martin Šimečka writes. But he concludes in the weekly Dilema Veche that this hope has not been fulfilled: “It seems to me that the discussions of the past 20 years prove one thing: we are not yet free. All those among us who spent at least part of their adulthood under communism were so profoundly influenced by this experience that we will never be able to talk of it in a natural language in a free world. Although we can distinguish the brave from the cowards and the victims from the executioners we will never be able to differentiate between the free and the captive. In communism the category of free human being simply didn’t exist. Resistance and the attempts to live a life parallel to the system were the expression of a struggle for freedom, but not of freedom as such. … To discuss whether Central Europe has something to offer the West we must first have the courage to confront the truth. And the truth is that we haven’t used the past 20 years to find that courage.” (28/09/2009)