In Sunday’s general elections in Germany, the extremely right alternative to Germany (AFD) was in second place, for the first time since World War II. His electoral success is part of the trend of the far right of the re -rise throughout Europe, which has worried. As a university lecturer, I noticed that as a reaction to this phenomenon, many young people become interested in the ultimate left ideology, such as communism. Students study Karl Marx as a key political thinker and often admire the old ideas of Marxism and the writings of other communist ideologues for their criticism of class relations and capitalism.
While young people deal with these ideologies, it is important that they be aware that they are not just theories. Communism was applied as a political ideology of Marxist-Leninist parties in dozens of countries in Europe and Asia, resulting in repressive totalitarian regimes.
The Communist regime in my country, Cahija, which was part of a entity called Czechoslovakia in the 1940s, left a terrible legacy. Today, on the 77th anniversary of the choice that the Communists brought to power in Prague, I cannot help but think about how the regime came to life the lives of many families, including mine.
I was born shortly after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and I grew up, hearing that it was like to live under the Czechoslovak Communism. It was a dark and oppressive world in which the nationalization of production funds in reality meant the theft of factories and homes than richer citizens so that the state could turn them into rural houses or residences for top state officials. The concepts of honest elections and freedom of speech were mere dreams.
In this world, the possibilities of individuals are to study, travel or ensure good jobs often determine their “uncultivated political profile”, not their abilities. As a result, it was common to find qualified people who did not agree with the regime working on poorly paid and stigmatized jobs, while active members of the Communist Party, despite the poor academic success or lack of experience, occupied top positions. “All this became normal for us. No one believed that the totalitarian regime would fall,” my mother said recently.
Those who did not agree or face the regime paid a great price. There are many accounts in the Academy and the media of brutal practice of state security (STB) directed to Czechoslovaki citizens who considered “enemies of the state”: mass supervision, blackmailing, arrest, torture, execution and forced eviction. Stories of high dissidents, such as executed lawyer Milad Horak or closed writer Vaclav Havel, who became the first democratically elected Czech president, are well known.
But there are many other stories of people who have faced the repression that have remained unknown to the public. The institute for the study of totalitarian regimes has documented the cases of about 200,000 people arrested in communist Czechoslovakia because of their social class, status, opinion or religious beliefs. Of these, 4,495 died during prison.
My father belongs to this prisoner’s mass who are generally unknown. It was marked “dangerous for the Communist Society” in 1977 and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
When I was in my 20s, I found an old, yellow paper file hidden in the living room table, entitled “The Judgment on behalf of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic”. The faded writing text revealed that my father, along with his friend, was found guilty of avoiding military service and spreading negative political opinions.
My father did not agree hard with the communist party leading the country, and he refused to serve in the army, because in his primary office he failed to protect the land and his civilians during the invasion of the Warsaw Pact on the Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In the summer of that year, 200,000 soldiers from the Soviet Union and other communist European countries attacked the suppression of the movement of the democratic reform that appeared – what became known as the powder of spring. By the end of the year, 137 Czechs and Slovaks were killed. To maintain control in Prague, the Soviet Union permanently stationed the troops as a occupying force in the country. Until they retired in 1991, Soviet soldiers killed 400 people and raped hundreds of women.
Despite the brutal violence and crimes, the Communist Party still considered the Varšan packets of the Czechoslovakian allies.
Thus, the court sentenced my father to “against the Communist Party and the Society, damaging the relations between the Czechoslovak army and the power of the Warsaw Pact for his selfish reasons and as a great disappointment, given his promising background of the working class.” He was only 22 years old and was about to get married with my mother.
When I asked my father about the document and his time in prison, he silenced. Only my mother shared a few insights: “I was very pregnant and lost my baby. Your father came to see me in the hospital and said he would go to work for a while. I later learned that she was in prison. “
My mother sent her father to dozens of letters, but prison guards did not provide them. She tried to visit him several times, but he was not allowed to see him. She would wait outside the prison, hoping she would see him when the prisoners returned from their forced work. “I saw him once a few seconds. He was just a thin figure without a hair. He looked exhausted. We waved each other on each other,” my mother recalled. My father was released after 10 months because of good behavior.
Recently, I finally managed to convince my father to visit the national security archive in Prague with me. We hoped to find more information about who was running his case and who spying on him – maybe a friend or even a family member? To our disappointment, the staff handed us a thin file with a note: “Most of your father’s name documents destroyed state security.”
To hide as much as possible and forced people to forget, the communist regime destroyed the documents just before its downfall. What we discovered was a document of a prison guard who tried to force my father to spy on other prisoners.
“The prisoner is kind and very popular in the collective, which makes him a good candidate for providing information to us. He is emotionally dependent on his fiancée, which can be used against him,” the document writes. Perhaps his refusal to become a spy is the main reason why my father never gave any letter of my mother and threatened him with solitude.
Many, however, collaborated with the regime, which makes it difficult for families to reconcile with loved ones who were accidentally on the other side. This collaboration was guided or believing in political propaganda or fear that it would have a “bad political profile”, which could result in a loss of work or a lack of good chances of their children. Simply put, families faced a terrible choice every day; Their lives were full of betrayal and pawn.
It happened to my own family. For example, while my father was a political prisoner, my mother’s brother was a infamous StB officer who blackmailed people to get information about disidentia and contribute to the arrest of many citizens – probably even my father.
My grandfather tried to escape from the country to West Germany by his father, while one of my uncle on his mother’s side worked in a border guards unit known for shooting and killing people trying to escape from the Eastern Bloc. My grandmother by father was an active member of the Communist Party, writing propaganda columns for one of the party newspapers Rudé Právo (Red Law) and denied any injustice by the regime, including the arrest of his own son.
The father rehabilitated the Democratic Court in 1993, and his criminal letter was deleted. My family members who worked in security forces were expelled from their positions. However, the choices, beliefs and works of the past continue to affect the present.
There are many families like mine whose relationships continue to mark the traumatic experiences of communism. Many have lost family members or relatives on various forms of political violence, including prison in severe conditions and executions.
People who read theoretical Marxist and Leninist texts or accept communist ideas in the Western context – where there is no direct experience with communist regimes – they often do not recognize these real history.
This disadvantage of recognition helps to remedy the disadvantages of communist regimes – who have promised to remove economic and social inequality, but have brought new ones and, in the process, participated in serious human rights violations.
When looking for a true alternative to the current social and political climate, we must learn from the experiences of those who lived under totalitarian regimes. The main political theories influence our society, and thus live the experiences of those who have suffered in such political systems should inform our understanding of them. Only then can we prevent the repetition of historical injustices.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.
