One might ask, “Why dig up the past? Let’s forgive and forget.” The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian justice ministries beg to differ.

Getting the European Parliament to condemn crimes of communism, is an idea that Estonian justice Minister Ken-Marti Vaher was able to sell his Latvian counterpart Aivars Aksenoks and the Lithuanian assistant deputy minister of justice Juozas Akspinas at a meeting last Thursday (Nov. 27).

Vaher has indicated that the proposal could be more sweeping – the condemnation of communism itself. Then it would surpass a declaration enacted by the Estonian parliament in 2002 – that condemned the crimes of the occupying communist regime in Estonia. But individual complicity was left (if at all) for the courts to handle, case by case.

By offering a collective evaluation of communism, members of the European Union would then relate with similar values to totalitarianism and its attendant crimes. The declaration, if ratified, would help in a societal healing process as it did in Estonia during its debate, he added.

Selling it to Euro-parlamentarians won’t be easy, even though that institution can affirm any type of declaration or resolution it finds strategically beneficial . Although the Nuremberg trials found the Nazi party to be and Nazism is universally abhorred, broaching equal castigation for communism is a formidable task, especially in Western Europe.

In fact anti-anticommunism has a strong presence in Western Europe. They perceive the Soviets to be their liberators from Nazism. Individual European communist parties are well represented in the European Parliament.

It’s quite likely that the acceding new EU members of East and Central Europe would endorse the condemnation of communism having borne decades of its repressions. But many Western Europeans still harbor beliefs that communist ideology has an ethical core, that the Soviet model was a noble endeavour that doesn’t need to apologize for its misdeeds.

Even though these misdeeds were more vehement, longer-lasting and with many times more victims than of nazism, communism is still held in a morally loftier position than fascism.

This is a challenge with which our community activists could grapple.

Namely, in co-operation with the Estonian community’s partners from the cold-war era, to persuade Canadian media, diplomats from Western European countries and people of influence, of the necessity of resolutely rejecting totalitarianism.

In the context of an enlarged European Union where the evolving democratic processes and structures, and the disproportionate future dominance of the EU’s large member-states are being vigorously questioned, this possible lobbying effort could be fascinating as well as historically momentous.

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