I see that Mr. Laas Leivat in a recent article is calling for Canadians to lobby their elected representatives to gain support for having the European Union resolutely reject totalitarianism. The article is headed up “Condemning communist crimes in an enlarged Europarliament”.

I am informed by Mr. Leivat in his article that Estonia recently formally condemned crimes committed by Communism in Estonia.

I gather that Estonia prudently did not condemn Communism itself as part of its healing process in coming to grips with the past. This seems a wise move since many otherwise relatively innocent people who had joined the Party for pragmatic reasons such as to get a better job or receive higher education would be unjustly labeled. Some may have even naively joined for idealistic reasons after having been brain-washed for several generations by the educational system — as Lenin himself observed, there were always useful idiots.

However, the Estonian Justice Minister Mr. Vaher, together with his other Baltic counterparts, is thinking of expanding the proposal to the EU to a condemnation of Communism itself. This would surpass the declaration enacted by the Estonian Parliament. By offering a collective evaluation of Communism it is felt that members of the EU would then relate with similar values to totalitarianism and its attendant crimes. Mr. Leivat seems to agree with this and notes that the new members of the EU would endorse a condemnation of communism having borne decades of its repression. It is felt that this declaration would help in a societal healing process in the EU as it did in Estonia.

As Mr. Leivat notes, selling this to Euro-Parliamentarians won’t be easy as many Western Europeans still regard the Soviets as liberators. They had the extreme good fortune to be liberated by either the US or US subsidized (Lend-Lease) forces. Denmark came within a whisker of being liberated by the Red Army but the Canadian army frustrated that at the last minute.

Unfortunately, Denmark, being a small European country, does not swing that much weight.

France in particular and Italy to a large degree had large influential Communist parties, made up of both workers and vocal intellectuals. Many of these people are still around not having departed the scene to a warmer place and most of them were idealistic “true believers” living in their own fantasy world. It can be expected that these aging Reds and their fellow travelers will be furious at the prospect of having their life’s beliefs which in most cases amounted to a religion, formally condemned. They can probably live with condemnation of crimes committed by the other “comrades” as “mistakes” or “excesses” since the incontrovertible evidence against these has become overwhelming and undeniable.

If Communism itself as an ideology, rather than its crimes is condemned, vocal apologists will for obvious reasons rehash with relish the unfortunate circumstances of Hitler’s “final solution” in the Baltic States. Estonia has a pretty good record in this regard notwithstanding SS Inspector General Soodla and allegations against some Estonian police battalions fighting with the Nazis. Latvia and Lithuania alas, do not fare so well. If the Estonians align themselves closely with their neighbors on this, there is a good chance world opinion may think less of them.

Estonians were very cool and calculating in the way they carefully regained their nation’s sovereignty step by step as the Soviet Union imploded. In contrast to the bloodshed that occurred in the other two Baltic States, Estonia had almost none. The age-old Estonian virtue of patience and pragmatism in the face of adversity probably was responsible. The Finnish people seem to be of much the same temperament. The leadership of the country at the time consisted entirely of Communist Party members who had worked their way up in that organization with all that entailed. Many, such as President Rüütel, a Shevardnadze look-alike, are still prominent in the government of Estonia but can arguably be regarded as Estonian patriots, notwithstanding their former Party membership. How will these people appear to the EU and how will it reflect on Estonia?

Communism and its fellow travelers have been on the defensive for some years now. Senator McCarthy’s allegations have proved astonishing true and he is no longer regarded by most objective historians as a drunken demagogue. With the availability of high powered computers and materials available from recently opened sources, Soviet dispatches have been decoded to a large extent in the project known as “Venona”. Among other things, it has been proven that the Rosenbergs really were atomic spies and that Alger Hiss was a communist agent of great influence. The massacre of Polish officers has been publicly admitted as has the great Ukrainian famine. Even many of Stalin’s crimes were admitted to by Khrushchev in the 1956 “secret speech”. Robert Conquest is no longer derided by the left wing intelligentsia as a “Cold War Warrior”. The awful truth is even more horrible than his worst case scenarios. Despite all this Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize has not been revoked and the “bronze soldier” still stands in Tallinn, but it is now clearly just a matter of time.

I have no problem with and support public condemnation of communism’s specific crimes which are truly horrendous. I also have no problem with a blanket condemnation of totalitarianism, who after all can be against motherhood. I am however, somewhat disturbed at condemning somebody’s beliefs which in many cases amounted to religion. In the past the Christian Church committed the same crimes. The European wars of religion were vicious and to my generation just as much history as Stalinism. Do we want to give those aging atheists a platform from which to countercharge? The French in particular have a long history of being anticlerical and they have had great difficulties in coming to grips with their own history during the Second World War. Rather than helping the EU heal itself the declaration could do just the opposite and what right after all do we here have to tell the Europeans what to do?

Having been raised in a free and democratic society based on the rule of law, I think everyone has the right to believe what they want and this includes both Communists and the “Elvis is Alive” sect. As long as they don’t commit crimes, leave them alone. If they commit crimes then let the courts deal with them. Whether or not octogenarians of both stripes should be prosecuted and/or stripped of their citizenship and deported is not for us to decide.

Perhaps we should exercise patience, continue to educate the world as to what happened and let everyone draw their own conclusions.

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