Not convicted crimes comes back

Seven years in the camps and five years in exile – as Miroslav Marinović has received from the Soviet government for what was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He says he lived behind bars spiritually rich, richer lives, than it is now. Dissident and human rights activist, member of the initiative “First of December”, the vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University has recently entered into a three of the major moral authorities of Ukraine according to the magazine “New Era”. During the discussion, “Lessons of History” in Lviv Mr Marinovic spoke about the main dilemma of the Soviet era, which again becomes relevant.

– It is a struggle between the instinct of self-preservation ( “not put out because srezhut”) and the voice of conscience, the natural human desire to do good that is given to him at birth. In Soviet times, this struggle gave rise to two types of personality. The first type – people who completely obey the instinct of self-preservation – the so-called homo soveticus. People willing to hide in a crack, to protect themselves from evil. The second type – the people that won the voice of conscience, and who became dissidents and joined the resistance movement.

error dissidents

This dilemma is returned. She, like Halley’s comet, which rotates around the sun, sometimes approaching Earth. Only every new generation, every era attaches to this dilemma the new parameters. Today, it is relevant for Ukraine, and for the world. On the one hand – a security issue: how to prevent World War III? How not to annoy Putin, that he did not destroy Ukraine? And on the other, how to protect the values ​​that underpin human civilization, for which twice went Maidan? Again a struggle between the instinct of self-preservation and the call of morality.

The main reason that this dilemma is returned, is that we are not condemned the crimes of communism, not expiated his sin. Partial responsibility for this lies with the dissidents.

In the early ’90s we did not want to carry out a new Nuremberg trial. It was important not to punish past and make a new social contract. The crimes of the communist regime, it seemed to me so obvious that the Communists themselves are aware of them and want to live a new life. I compared the crimes of communism with the crime of Cain, which, as we know from the Bible, is subject only to the judgment of God. It believed that if we manage to overcome the spiritual communism, we will be able to do without formal legal judgment. That was a mistake.

communist crime turned Kuchma crimes period, a symbol which is Georgiy Gongadze. Crimes Kuchma period were not, despite the slogan of “bandits – the prison,” convicted after the Orange Revolution. Political prisoners soon became political opponents and chase them was impossible. Consequently, crimes Yanukovych Kuchma period turned into crimes, which also are still not punished and condemned. Still there are untouchables, those people that for reasons of political expediency is still justice.

error in Europe

War of 1939 started two world monster – the Nazi regime in Germany and the communist Soviet regime. They began this deadly tango together, and then one of them turned their weapons against the other, and they came together in battle.

Soviet troops invaded Finland – this is definitely the culprit. And the very soldiers deploying weapons against the Nazis, became a conquering hero. This dual role of the Soviet Union in World War II – the role of the forces started the war itself it victoriously completed – are now involves much confusion.

According to West, suffering and heroism in the “Soviet people” during the war, give a moral right not to look into the crimes of the Gulag, not to think of Stalin’s purges. So we have a double standard in the treatment of the crimes of those times. The world heard the screams of people being tortured in the cellars of the Gestapo, but heard cries of tortured NKVD.

Timothy Snyder wrote that there is a difference in the historical memory of Western and Eastern Europe. East has experienced in the twentieth century two terrible totalitarian regime, and the West must recognize and rethink it. Victory over nazism should not close our eyes to the other side of the Soviet regime – criminal. “Can a prisoner who died in Vorkuta, to be happy, that died in Dachau?” – he wrote the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski.

After the fall of the Third Reich in Germany held a hearing. After the fall of the Polish People’s Republic Voytseh Yaruzelsky also appeared before the court, though he was promised immunity. However, in the early 90’s the Germans tried to convince me: “Do not do Nuremberg-2, it is not necessary!”. Even more than once at the German-Ukrainian readings – and this was the time when Viktor Yushchenko finally raised to the national level the issue of Holodomor – the whole German delegation attacked the Ukrainians: “What are you doing Why raise this topic it not? realize that it mocks Russia, you’ll have new challenges? “.

So, the rule of law has worked in Europe, but she tried to block or at least delay a similar process in the post-Soviet space. These delays have led to what is already current generation must pay the price for the communist crimes. It seems to me that Heavenly hundreds, and soldiers killed at the front – the victim of what communism was not convicted in a timely manner. And part of the responsibility for what is happening today in Ukraine is on Europe.

Sourse, 21/09/2015