Читать книгу The Power of Freedom - Mart Laar - Страница 3

‘I trust that these times will vanish like a horrible nightmare. It gives me strength to stand here and breathe. Our nation has suffered much and therefore we will survive these dark times,’ announced the Latvian freedom fighter Gunārs Astra, on 15 December 1983, to the Supreme Court of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic sentencing him for the second time to the GULAG prison camps in Siberia for anti-Soviet activities.

Astra was right. The dark times of totalitarian Communism really did vanish and today, in 2010, Europe can celebrate the 20th anniversary of freedom in Central and Eastern Europe, which ended the 50-year division of Europe by the Iron Curtain. On one side of this curtain, there was freedom, democracy, the rule of law and a market economy ruled. On the other people had to live under terror, violence, totalitarianism and the socialist command economy. Under the Communist dictatorships, millions of people were killed, arrested, tortured and sent to labour camps. These countries were cut off from the rest of the world and the peoples’ rights were taken away from them. This resulted in the destruction of the economy, civil society and the environment in these countries. Most destructive of all were the wounds inflicted on human souls.

It all ended in 1989. During peaceful revolutions, Central and Eastern Europe freed itself from Communism and took its first steps on the road back to a common civilisation of freedom, law and democracy. Revolutions are usually bloody affairs; violent transfers of power. But revolutions need not be violent in order to qualify as such. When Nicolaus Copernicus analysed the position of stars in the sky, he formulated the first scientific definition of revolution as a process whereby the stars return to their original positions. Hannah Arendt applied this observation to politics and concluded that revolutions are actually a return to the original freedom of man.

So in 1989, Central and Eastern Europe was free again and it was only then that its populations discovered what Communism had really done to their countries and people over the previous 50 years. Communism culminated in total economic failure, the collapse of social networks, poverty and the rapid growth of criminality. New democratic governments elected to power during the first free elections had to lead their countries out of these crises, build democratic institutions and establish the rule of law and market economies. There was no textbook available to guide such an undertaking, nobody had done it before. It was certainly not an easy task, but the results have been better than anybody expected during the difficult times of the final years of Communism.

Now, 20 years on, it is time to draw the first conclusions and look at what we have achieved and what we have not. It is hard to deny that it has been a real success story; Europe has been united and there is now far greater stability and prosperity. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have changed beyond recognition, although it has not been possible to overcome all of the problems created by 50 years of Communist rule, however. Compared to Western Europe, the new Member States are still poor even though they have moved closer to matching average European standards of living.

Unfortunately, the 20th anniversary of freedom in Central and Eastern Europe coincides with the biggest global economic crisis since the Second World War and, indeed, this crisis has hit many Central and Eastern European countries hard. This has raised certain questions: have democratic and market reforms been at all successful? Was life not better under Communism? These questions must be answered quickly. Now, during the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolutions and the fall of Communism, is the best time to do so. Unfortunately, we have not given due credit to this success story, with the result that the enlargement of Europe has more often been regarded as a problem than a success. It is at last time to put events in Central and Eastern Europe into perspective, demonstrating to all how freedom works.

This is especially important as the developments in Central and Eastern Europe during the bloody twentieth century are often misunderstood and misused. One such misunderstanding, for example, is the way in which totalitarian Communism is evaluated by many scholars and by public opinion across the world. The magnitude of Communist crimes, the level of violence and the total number of victims of Communist terror are all underestimated. Communism is perceived as a political system that is only slightly different to our own, one that is associated with limitations on political freedom, but which nonetheless helped to modernise backward Central and Eastern European countries, achieving literacy, economic development, full employment and social guarantees such as free health care and education to their populations.

In reality, however, Communism was a complete failure. To understand this, rather than compare the level of development in Central and Eastern European countries’ in 1989 with their level in 1945, it should be compared with the level of development in Western countries in 1989: countries such as West Germany, Greece, Finland, Spain and Portugal. Such a comparison clearly demonstrates that West European countries, starting from the same or an even lower level at the end of World War II, had achieved markedly more success in all areas than the countries that found themselves trapped under the Communist yoke.

This is a book about Communism, about what it really accomplished and about the destruction it caused during its decades in power. Without this, it is not possible to understand the problems and challenges of transition.

The second misunderstanding is the answer to the question of what made the fall of the Soviet system possible. The main reason for the USSR’s collapse is often understood to be perestroika and the goodwill of its initiator, Mikhail Gorbachev. It is true that most of the revolutions in 1989 were peaceful, but these years were actually only the final steps on the long road of the fight for freedom that had in fact lasted for decades. Freedom was not restored in Central and Eastern Europe without blood and fierce fighting, during which thousands of freedom fighters died. Perestroika, which led to collapse of the Soviet system, was not started because Gorbachev liked democracy and freedom; rather, the victory of Western civilisation in the Cold War pushed the Soviet Union into a corner from which it had no option other than to try to reform the system. The Central and Eastern European nations played an important role in this victory, fighting the war as brothers in arms on the side of the West. The battles of this war were fought on the streets of Berlin in 1953, Poznan and Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968, Gdansk in 1970 and 1980, and in the Baltic forests and swamps during the long partisan movement against the Soviet invaders. The Soviet system was weakened by civil resistance to Communism and by the will of the people wanting to live as free men and women. It would not have been possible for the Western world to win this war alone; the victory came through a common struggle.

This is a book about courage – about how fear was overcome step by step. How, in the beginning, there were always only small groups of brave people who risked everything and were often crushed by totalitarian regimes for doing so. Their courage nevertheless paved the way to continued resistance – and, in the end this resistance crushed the Evil Empire. This is also a story of solidarity: without the West’s success in the Cold War, the Soviet empire would not have been defeated.

The third misunderstanding lies in an underestimation of the achievements of Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy and a market economy. This transition is often associated with economic misery, social tensions, the rise of inequality and unemployment. Developments in Central and Eastern Europe and their achievements are compared with the current economic and social conditions in Western welfare states, rather than with the situation in transition countries at the fall of Communism. The magnitude of the failure of the Communist command economy and the social experiment is underestimated, with the collapse of the economy and social structures being linked instead to reforms introduced during the transition period that were considered ‘too liberal’. In fact, the misery had more to do with the chaos created by the collapse of Communism; the reforms were a response to this collapse. They did not cause it, rather, they were intended to lead Central and Eastern Europe out of crises.

This path was, of course, not an easy one. A number of mistakes were made, while the speed of development and the achievements of transition have varied significantly. Some countries have failed badly resulting in even more misery than they had experienced under Communist rule. In Central and Eastern Europe, the results have nevertheless been excellent. An important role in this success was played by the desire of Central and Eastern European countries to ‘return to Europe’ and by the willingness of Western Europe to accept the countries that had been cut off from it for 50 years. Nineteen eighty-nine opened the doors that had been slammed shut by the forces of a tragic history. It was the beginning of a homecoming.

This is a book about the power of freedom and democracy. The achievements of the transition of former Communist countries have often been underestimated and the success of the enlargement of the European Union, neglected. Hopefully, such an understanding will encourage Europe today to continue its enlargement, bringing greater stability to its borders.

The experience of the new Member States demonstrates clearly that freedom really works. This is the main reason why this book concentrates on telling the stories of the new EU Member States: Estonian, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the former East Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. This area is also known as Central and Eastern Europe. Developments in Russia, the Ukraine or the Balkans are also touched upon in order to put events into context. Separated from Europe by the Iron Curtain and subjected to the processes of Sovietisation, the captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe continued their fight for freedom and eventually won a decisive victory, liberating their countries from Communist dictatorship. Their journey back to Europe has not been easy, it demanded a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but ultimately this goal was achieved.

This book is dedicated to the road to freedom of the former captive nations of Europe and to all those who sacrificed their lives to make this dream come true.