crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Sandra Kalniete
Divergences within European politics with regard to
communist totalitarianism
First, I would like to express my gratitude to the European Commission and the Slovenian Presidency
of the European Union for organising this hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”. More
particularly, I would like to thank the President of the European Commission, Mr Jose Manuel Barroso, and
the Vice-President, Mr Franco Frattini, whose personal commitment made the holding of this European
hearing possible. It is the first European attempt at such a high political level to have a debate about the
crimes of totalitarianism in Europe in the 20 th century. This European hearing must become the cornerstone
of the evaluation process of the political, legal and historical aspects of totalitarian communism. It is
imperative in order to go beyond the consequences of the Iron Curtain in the consciousness of Europeans,
to unify and render coherent, the still divided and contradictory history of Europe.
In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed clear that there would be no further
obstacle to the truth coming out about the crimes of communism and to their condemnation. In fact,
we, who in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, were subjected to the oppression of communist
totalitarianism, realised that the quest for justice, recognition of the truth and the condemnation of
communism was meeting resistance in the corridors of power of Western democracies, in academic
circles and in society in general.
However, debates on post-war European history were inevitable and today that history is the basis
of much dissensions among Europeans. The heated nature of discussion proves that we have not yet
managed to “de-ideologise” history and that we are pursuing the political battles of the last century in
this 21 st century.
Until Enlargement, the post-war history of Europe was clear. To simplify, its concept was based
on two mainstays – the Second World War (the winners – good and bad – and the losers) and Franco-
German reconciliation (the building of the ‘common European home’). The true implications of the
Iron Curtain had no place in this carefully balanced history.
After Enlargement, Europeans discovered with astonishment that for Eastern Europe and the
Baltic States, 1945 was not a magical year. Indeed for us, the end of the war was not a liberation, but
the beginning of another tyranny, the replacing of the Nazi totalitarian regime by the Soviet totalitarian
regime. For Europeans from the East and the Baltic States, the war continued until the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the retreat of the Red Army from Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. The last consequences
of the war were wiped out on 1 st May 2004, when the Europe divided by the Iron Curtain was reunified.
In the same way, the majority of Europeans did not understand that the dichotomy between “winners”
and “losers” seems too simplistic for us. Our experience proves that all winners are not “good” and that
all losers are not “bad”. And those who were neutral, alternatively occupied by belligerents, did not fit
into this binary scheme of things.
It is uncomfortable for Europeans to recognise that the building of the common European home was
partly made possible by decisions taken at the Tehran Conference (1943) and the Yalta Conference (1945),
when the victorious Allies accepted that the freedom of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States was to be
sacrificed to the Soviet Union. The quasi-official version of post-war European history mentions but little
about the ravages that followed these Allied decisions on the peoples and states left behind the Iron Curtain.
These decisions left a free hand to Stalin in the Soviet Union and his henchmen in the states of Eastern Europe
to carry out their repression on a grand scale. The figures show that the extreme extension of the Gulag and
the large increase in the number of people deported after the war reached a paroxysm around 1950.
Today each pupil in the West knows that Nazism represents Evil. They know this because, after
the war there was a systematic de-nazification and the creation of a political, legal and social framework
to prevent the return of totalitarian ideologies in Europe. The result of this great work is that today the
majority of Europeans are conscious of the importance of thwarting at the roots any manifestation of
racism, xenophobia, nationalism, religious intolerance and anti-Semitism.
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