Global IssuesSLOVAKIA: Velvet Touch Brings Communists Back
As Slovaks mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism this week, former dissidents have lashed out at top political figures, including the prime minister, who they say are trying to paint the totalitarian regime of old in a positive light.
Some refused to join Prime Minister Robert Fico and other leading government officials for an official event this week marking the beginning of the Velvet Revolution which brought down the communist regime in then Czechoslovakia in 1989. They stayed away after it was revealed that former communist functionaries had been invited to speak.
The furore has sparked debate on how some former communist party chiefs, secret police officers and agents have prospered during the post-communist era while former political prisoners have seen no form of compensation for their persecution at the hands of the state.
Miroslav Kusy, former dissident and one of the most prominent Slovak figures of the revolution, told IPS: 'I will not attend an event marking the fall of communism where ex-communists are going to talk to me about the fall of communism. It's as if fascists organised a celebration of an uprising against the Nazis.
'Bringing up the good points of communism is done all the time. It's like praising the good points of fascism - there was full employment and Hitler of course loved dogs. But the regime as a whole was sick and that applies to communism as well. To highlight its good side goes against normal, healthy, thinking.'
The communists took power in then Czechoslovakia in 1948 following a coup. Over the next 41 years hundreds of people were sent to their deaths or tortured, and tens of thousands were imprisoned, or subjected to forced labour for even the slightest show of anti-regime sentiment.
The feared secret police, the StB, used a network of agents and informants to terrorise and punish suspected or potential dissidents, or individuals seen as 'uncomfortable' for the regime.
The November 1989 revolution saw the communist party peacefully ousted from power, with the entire government stepping down amid massive nationwide protests.
An interim regime including many communist officials was set up and the first free elections were held months later.
Since then former communist party members have managed to work their way to the very top posts in the country - a fact some dissidents have admitted they have had to resign themselves to.
'I am disappointed but we elected them, democratically and it is that democracy and choice which we wanted at the time of the revolution,' said Kusy.
Fico, head of the left-wing Smer party, joined the communist party in 1987. His political career began with the direct successor of the communist party, the Slovak Democratic Left party, before he then formed Smer.
He has openly maintained his left-wing ideology and has publicly said that the November 1989 revolution brought 'no real change' in his life. He has refused to condemn all aspects of the former regime, and at a public event marking the May 1 national holiday earlier this year greeted the crowd with the phrase 'honour work' - the obligatory public greeting between all people under communism.
His decision to spend Nov. 17, the date of the start of the revolution and a national holiday in Slovakia, this year in London was criticised by some observers as a sign of his attitude to the revolution and a lack of respect to those who rose up against the communists.
But the Prime Minister is far from the only senior figure in the country to have a communist past. The President, Ivan Gasparovic, was a communist party member.
The man Gasparovic took over from as President in 2004, Rudolf Schuster, was the last communist leader of the Slovak parliament in 1989, and stayed in power until the middle of the following year when the communist regime was formerly ended and the first democratic elections took place. He is now retired and lives in a large villa in the east of the country.
Milan Cic, the last justice minister in the Slovak communist regime and whose ministry oversaw the imprisonment of dissidents, went on to become the first post-revolution Slovak prime minister before occupying senior positions in subsequent governments. He is currently head of President Gasparovic's office.
Former communist secret police officials and agents have also prospered since the Velvet Revolution.
Alojz Lorenc, the last head of the feared Czechoslovak communist secret police - the StB - in November 1989, is now employed by one of the largest financial groups in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He founded his own successful IT firm in the 1990s after evading justice for a sentence passed in the Czech Republic for illegal arrest and detention of dissidents during the revolution. He had refused to go to the Czech Republic to serve the sentence after Czechoslovakia split in 1993.
Following the fall of the communist regime others also took up positions in the new Slovak police and secret service, either with or without their superiors having a knowledge of their past. The secret service (SIS) and police deny that any former StB members are in their ranks.
And to the anger and disappointment of many former political prisoners, most of who say they have struggled financially as well as physically and mentally because of the persecution they suffered, former StB officials receive larger state pensions than them.
According to the Sme daily, senior StB members receive up to 800 euros per month pension - the national average is 330. But the maximum paid out to any former political prisoner is 700 euros, and only if they were jailed for ten years or more. Others receive as little as half that amount.
Some experts say that the situation is a combination of apathy and ignorance in parts of society towards the communist past.
The Institute for National Remembrance which was set up to document and archive the crimes of the communist regime says that in schools children are taught little of the events of 1989 and are ignorant of what life was like under communism.
Others say the communist past has been deliberately glossed over by the country's successive post-communist powerbrokers.
Grigorij Meseznikov, political analyst with the Institute for Public Affairs think tank in Bratislava, told IPS: 'The people who led the 1989 revolution were not the ones who took power afterwards, and over the last 20 years the country's leading political forces have had no interest in discussing issues such as this.
'The people in power today did not expect or plan the changes of 1989, or even want them. But they took advantage of them to move forward.'
Kusy added that the nature of the revolution itself may ultimately have led to former communists being able to work their way into powerful positions today.
'We had a velvet revolution, not a bloody one. Perhaps if it had been like that, a hard line drawn with the past, things would be different. But that is not something we wanted and I would still now take the velvet path rather than the bloody one.'
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service