‘Groundhog Day’: How to overcome the communist past?

Where has Yanukovych come from? Why is it important to describe the communist crimes as crimes? Why hasn’t Europe realized the similarities between the two world totalitarian systems – the Nazism and the Communism? Answers to these questions are offered by Myroslav Marynovych, dissident, political prisoner and human rights activist, vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University.

The conversation took place in Lviv, at the meeting “The crimes and sins of Communism: challenges of overcoming” within the historical site of the Forum of Publishers “Lessons of History.”

Fear and conscience

Myroslav Marynovych was sentenced in 1977 to seven years in prison and five years of deportation for participating and co-founding of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. So he has every right to speak about the crimes of Communism.

The main dilemma of that time was the dilemma between two instincts: self-preservation instinct and moral instinct.

“When you read recollection of the early Soviet regime, you definitely see there the horror of people who suddenly began to realize what a terrible power has come and that it’s very difficult to hide from it. The attempt to save yourself and your family was absolutely clear. On the other hand, there is another instinct, the moral instinct, or you can call it ‘the voice of conscience.’ This is a natural, deep human desire to do good deeds. It is also the inborn instinct. The struggle between these two instincts gave birth to the types of people. If you almost exclusively trusted in the self-preservation instinct, you were a type of ‘Homo Sovieticus’, a man who is hiding in the smallest gap to protect himself from evil. If the voice of conscience won, then the dissidents, fighters, members of the resistance movement appeared. It was a whole palette of people with different ideological convictions, but those who overcame fear, self-preservation instinct and made a sacrifice,” the human rights activist says.

History repeating

In his opinion, this dilemma remains nowadays as well. For example, the Ukrainian government is forced to think about how not to annoy Russia so that it didn’t start the complete destruction of Ukraine. On the other hand, the government thinks how to protect the values ​​for which the Ukrainians started the Maidan protests twice. This dilemma comes to the international level: how to prevent the World War III and how to protect the values ​​of human civilization.

“One of the main reasons for present-day revival of the long-standing dilemma lies in the fact that we have not condemned the crimes of Communism and we have not atoned this sin,” Marynovych notes.

He recalls that Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, said once that the Communism could be overcome neither by military means, nor by economic ones, it might be defeated only by persuasive Christianity. Myroslav Marynovych does not consider it to be a definite answer, as the Soviet Union collapsed due to many factors: the threat of war, the position of the United States, the economic failure of the Soviet Union to survive in the arms race.

“It turned out that it was easy enough to defeat the Communism with political means. Even now, although those parties exist, we understand that the Communism has left political arena. Has it left spiritual arena? This problem remains huge. Why can not we say firmly that we overcame the Communism and got rid of it in our public life? Let’s ask ourselves: where has Yanukovych come from? I’m not talking about Leonid Kravchuk or Leonid Kuchma as they are fresh, they just came out of the Communism. But where Yanukovich has come from? He has come from the reincarnated Communism, from the communist elite, which changed its flags and rhetoric,” the former political prisoner says.

Will we deal without trial?

Myroslav Marynovych believes that happened due to a fault of the dissidents as well, who discussed the problem of “the second Nuremberg” in 1980s-1990s. However, they did not raise the issue of punishment for crimes, wanting just to conclude a new public agreement. The hope was that the Communists themselves realized the scale of their crimes and would begin live a new life.

“The Communist crimes turned into the crimes of Kuchma rule with the Gongadze case as a symbol. The crimes of Kuchma rule were not condemned during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko. In a month, the political perpetrators became political opponents, whom it was impossible to prosecute. The crimes of Yanukovych also originate from unconvicted crimes of the past. We still cannot launch the mechanism of the rule of law. I do not see any progress even today, after the Revolution of Dignity. We can not say that the mechanism is running and covering both the proponents and the opponents of the government,” the human rights activist says.

To recognize crime as crime

The dissident notes he is not a lawyer, so he cannot say how the Communism should be trialed and does not want to give any advice. However, it is crucial to recognize crime as crime.

According to Marynovych, the Communism is often considered to be a purely political phenomenon, forgetting about the ethical aspect, which is important: “In 1939, the World War II was started by two world criminals, two world monsters – the Nazi regime in Germany and the Bolshevik regime of the Soviet Union. Later, one of those monsters turned his weapons against the other, and they came together in the battle. We got a big mess, which the world cannot get out from until now. It lies in the following: how should we treat the Soviet Union if it defeated the Nazism? Should we recall that it was the Soviet Union which started the war? The West believed that we should not, as its participation and suffering of people during the World War II actually seemed to give the moral right not to look at the crimes of the Stalinist purges and so on, give the moral right to push them aside.”

Fresh approach

A certain rethinking is already happening in Europe now. However, recently, the human rights activist says, when the scientists from Latvia in their speech at a European Conference equalized the Nazi and the Communist regimes, some participants got up and came out of the conference showing protest. It was believed that the Nazi regime was the absolute evil, while the Communism was a good idea, spoiled by the Slavs. The fact that the Communists in France and Italy were even the good mayors once was misleading also, Myroslav Marynovych notes.

Rethinking was promoted, for example, by the works of the American historian Timothy Snyder, who was welcomed in Europe and could not be accused of biased and nationalistic sentiments. He got the message across to the European community that the background in Western and Eastern Europe was different, as the East had experienced a very brutal totalitarianism, and the Western Europe could not ignore that. However, the unequal treatment of the two totalitarian systems still remains.

For its further development, the society should reach a common understanding of the good and the evil in the issue, Myroslav Marynovych stresses.