Communism new fad in Europe?

[bfp]

BRUSSELS -- The Berlin Wall may have been toppled 15 years ago and most of the countries that languished behind it are now fully-fledged members of NATO and the European Union, but this has done little to stem the rising tide of nostalgia for communist times in Central and Eastern Europe.

Only a handful of diehard Stalinists would prefer to trade in their Trabants for their Volkswagens and swap their hard-fought freedom for one-party rule, but from Estonia on the shores of the Baltic Sea to Slovenia on the Adriatic coast, there is a renewed interest in the region's communist past that ranges from ironic mockery to wistful regret.

Almost every capital city in the former eastern bloc has a monument honoring the victims of communist tyranny, and most have museums keeping the reality of Marxist rule alive. Prague has a Museum of Communism above a McDonald's restaurant and next door to a casino, Latvia's capital Riga has an Occupation Museum cataloging the barbarities inflicted on the Baltic country by Nazi and Soviet invaders, and Lithuania has a Museum of Genocide Victims housed in a former KGB barracks.

Visits to these memorials are serious, sobering affairs. The Occupation Museum, a black, bunker-like building in central Riga, recounts how Latvia lost 550,000 people -- a third of its population -- during the half-century of Nazi and Soviet rule. An inscription above the door reads: "In order to learn from history, we must know and understand it. Only then can there be hope that past evil will not be repeated."

However, some of the more recent communist "theme-parks" take a more light-hearted and hands-on approach to the half-century of one-party rule. In a small village in northern Serbia, local Blasko Gabric has created "Yugoland," an exact replica of the former Yugoslavia replete with statues of former president Tito and loudspeakers belting out cheery Soviet folk songs.

In southern Lithuania, 75 statues of Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels loom over passersby, guards stare down from watchtowers, and barbed wire fences prevent visitors from leaving. In the restaurant, waitresses dressed as Pioneers (communist scouts) serve cabbage soup "nostalgia" and pork chops "goodbye youth," while the Grutas Museum's souvenir shop sells vodka glasses emblazoned with mug shots of Marx and Lenin.

Viliumas Malinauskas, the founder of the popular tourist attraction, says: "This is not a theme park -- it is a deadly serious memorial for the victims of communism." But not everyone is happy with the park dubbed "Stalinworld" by its detractors. "The Grutas Museum is the peak of cynicism, a mockery of the thousands of totally innocent civilians who were murdered, tortured and deported to the gulags of Siberia," says Ona Voveriene, chairperson of the Lithuanian Women's League.

A similar battle about how to remember communism has been raging in the eastern half of Germany since last year's cinema hit "Goodbye Lenin," which tells the story of a young man whose communist apparatchik mother falls into a coma shortly before the reunification of the country. To prevent his sick mum from discovering communism's demise, Alex recreates the drab world of East Germany in her flat, going as far as to empty Dutch pickles into jars with local labels.

The highly successful film was followed by a popular series about life in the former German Democratic Republic hosted by Katarina Witt, an East German figure skater and twice Olympic champion. Cashing in on the trend for "Ostalgie" -- nostalgia for life in the former East Germany -- there are now plans to build a giant theme park celebrating communist days in a Berlin suburb.

Many people who suffered under totalitarianism are uncomfortable about what they see as the glorification of communist rule. "We really need to be careful that the GDR does not achieve cult status," said Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit last year. He need not fear for the former eastern bloc's younger generation, who tend to view communism as an outdated ideology from a bygone age. But many of the region's older people take a more nuanced view of the four decades of communist rule.

"There are still a lot of people who long for the communist days, when everything was clear, black was black and white was white," says Oldrich Cerny, a Czech political analyst. "You kept your mouth shut, and the communist regime supplied you with shelter and bread."

Since the revolutions of 1989, communist parties have been voted back into power in most central and eastern European countries and regularly bag 10-20 percent of the vote in polls.

"Nobody is nostalgic for the Stalinist era," internationally acclaimed Czech novelist Ivan Klima told United Press International, "but many old people are nostalgic for their youth. They miss the security of communist times when they knew they would get a pension they could live off, prices were stable and they couldn't lose their flats or their jobs."

If politicians from the former Soviet bloc countries want to make sure the current fashion for communist nostalgia does not morph from tongue-in-cheek TV shows and theme parks into votes for far-left parties at the ballot box, they need to ensure stability, security and prosperity in addition to guaranteeing freedom and democracy.

This is not just the view of communism's opponents, but its supporters. In "Café Europa," a book of essays by Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic, the author stumbles across an improvised celebration of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's birthday in a Bucharest graveyard. Amidst the pensioners in their "thin, worn-out coats, rubber boots and fur hats," Drakulic spots Ceausescu's brother Flora and asks him about the gathering. "If the economy was better, there would be no need to revive him," he says, ever faithful to Marxist economic orthodoxy. "But the worse it gets, the more people will want to revive my brother."

Gareth Harding is Chief European Correspondent for UPI, a sister news service of Insight.

[Krash]

Why does communism have to be "one party"?

[Adam D]

I think you find as much reminants of the legacy in Eastern Europe to Communism as you do simply as a part of their history. Surely, it makes as much sense to maintain the history of what happened during that critical era from their own standpoint as it does to maintain any other period of history. They have not yet built a lasting history of post-Communism yet, and in many ways several of those countries are still in the process of developing a new society and a new economy.

As far as those who would wish for a return to Communism, you only need to look at their own history since the fall of Communism to understand that. Many are older people who are set in their ways, suddenly cast into something very different in the wave of "flash capitalism" sprung by the West in the early 1990s. Moreover, looking at the way capitalism has achieved less than hoped for in the former bloc, it should not be surprising that some people would choose a return to a system that was at very least more stable and secure than the sometimes unsupportive capitalism.

Originally Posted by Adam D

Moreover, looking at the way capitalism has achieved less than hoped for in the former bloc, it should not be surprising that some people would choose a return to a system that was at very least more stable and secure than the sometimes unsupportive capitalism.

Surely it is an easy thing to keep a State's people poor and in fear. North Korea is a fine example.

[bfp]

Originally Posted by Adam D

to a system that was at very least more stable and secure than the sometimes unsupportive capitalism.

bwahahahaha.

Do you call stores with empty shelves stable?

Do you call standing in line for 6 hours for a loaf of bread stable?

[Adam D]

Originally Posted by bfp

bwahahahaha.

Do you call stores with empty shelves stable?

Do you call standing in line for 6 hours for a loaf of bread stable?

Don't be a moron. Using worst-case scenarios to disprove an ideology makes as much sense as rejecting democracy because of the scandal in Florida in 2000 or rejecting capitalism simply because 18,000 people in the US die prematurely every year because they cannot afford adequate health care.

Imagine living in one politico-economic system for decades and then suddenly everything changes around you? Certainly for a conservative such as yourself, you can understand how those people would long for the old ways over something so radically different. Imagine if the US suddenly became a communist state over the course of a very short period of time.

Moreover, with the Western-directed shock capitalism of the early nineties and the neoliberalization of Eastern Europe by Western Europe in the mid and late nineties, Eastern Europe hasn't fared all that well economically. There are still people with empty shelves and no money to buy bread because unemployment is high, where there used to be jobs for everyone because the state provided them. It should come as no surprise that some would yearn for a return to the old.

[Keith P]

old news. Are you just now catching up on these sentiments?
put on the discovery channel or something.

Originally Posted by Adam D

Don't be a moron. Using worst-case scenarios to disprove an ideology .....

I lived in the Soviet Union for a summer. Empty shelves in the malls was not worst case scenario - it was business as usual. Actually - the shelves had a few things on them which represented what was currently not in stock.

Grocery stores stank from inefficient refrigeration. If you wanted meat - you better have hard currency or be first in line when the store opened. Eggs? forget about it. Liquor? the lines went for blocks on Tuesdays and Thursday when they got their resupply.

[Jimbo]

Originally Posted by xiannaix

I lived in the Soviet Union for a summer. Empty shelves in the malls was not worst case scenario - it was business as usual. Actually - the shelves had a few things on them which represented what was currently not in stock.

Grocery stores stank from inefficient refrigeration. If you wanted meat - you better have hard currency or be first in line when the store opened. Eggs? forget about it. Liquor? the lines went for blocks on Tuesdays and Thursday when they got their resupply.

But that was near the end of the Soviet Empire, right? I believe Adam was making the point that the older generation experienced relative stability during the earlier decades and so it makes sense why they would be nostalgic for those times, compared to the present struggle of transition.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

But that was near the end of the Soviet Empire, right? I believe Adam was making the point that the older generation experienced relative stability during the earlier decades and so it makes sense why they would be nostalgic for those times, compared to the present struggle of transition.

Sure was... 1990

the point I was making is that the stability they experienced was one of very modest existence. The Soviet Union of the 50s 60s 70s and 80s was not a golden era to be yearned for either. Pretty much everyone existed at the same low level - - the collapse of communism did permit many to live well beyond that low level even as it may have dropped the floor for some.

[djmerritt]

a little footnote: the last election in Russia- 14% voted for the communist candidate.

[Jimbo]

I'm amused by people still talking about communism as an international threat. You can count on one hand how many officially communist countries are left in the world, and most of them won't be 10-20 years from now. Those Cold War days are bye bye.

[Keith P]

I'm amused by people still talking about communism as an international threat. You can count on one hand how many officially communist countries are left in the world, and most of them won't be 10-20 years from now. Those Cold War days are bye bye.

I'd have to agree.
time to let it go people