For the countries of the former Eastern block the past is very much the present. But how do the citizens of the post soviet countries deal with their monstrous past? Do they try to rewrite their history into something more presentable? Or do they confess their mistakes and try learning on them? Tina Rosenberg, being a freelance journalist, has traveled through three former Soviet countries of the Eastern Europe, namely former Czechoslovakia, Poland and former Eastern Germany, in order to study the treatment of the citizens of these countries to their history and the particular actions of the governments dealing with this history. What finally emerged from this research is The Haunted Land. She asks: Who is guilty in those atrocities committed by the communist parties of these countries? How should they be punished? Who has the right to judge those guilty ones? It is not quite clear why did Tina Rosenberg choose these particular countries. The rule of the communists was quite short in them and by far not so tyrannical. It seems that the research like this one would result in a much more interesting book if made in the countries of the former Soviet Union e.g.
Russia and Ukraine. The Haunted Land is divided into three parts each one for every country mentioned above. The treatment to their past is very much the same for almost all citizens of the former Eastern Germany. Almost all of them hate communists for they divided Germany into two parts and their reign in the Eastern part was not the one people should welcome. The part of the book telling about Eastern Germany contains one of the most interesting Rosenbergs stories of the common people. She tells about the trial of four border guards who shot and killed the last person attempting to climb the Berlin wall.
The Essay on Germany Still Divided
The shocking fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe in the late eighties was remarkable for both its rapidity and its scope. None more than for East and West Germany. The unification of Germany has been one of the most significant and moving events of the 20th century. Yet the euphoria of those heady days in autumn 1989, when the world watched in rapt attention as the Berlin Wall came ...
This leads us to discussion concerning personal moral responsibility and moral indoctrination. The author seems not to defend those poor guys vigorously. Though such trial makes normal people laugh, of course not because of being too funny. Those soldiers are obviously innocent. They were put there as the sentries and behave like they should, according to the service regulations. The author does not suggest to put those who made such regulations to trial. Moreover, these regulations are typical to most of armies and frontier troops. The Berlin wall was the official border of two states.
Trying to cross it in an illegal method on the eyes of the armed border guards is a crime, and by the way a very stupid one. That person was not the victim of Communism but the one of his own stupidity. Tina Rosenberg goes on with the case of Vera Wollenberger, who found in her Stasi files the proof that her husband had been informing on her for years. Maybe this case was intended to provide the devastating demonstration of how deep the Communism cut into the peoples personal life. But what it really shows is just the fact that Mr. Wollenberger is a supergrass a little bit similar to Judas the Iscariot. Both these cases, when judged critically, appear to be the failure of Tina Rosenberg to support her statements. Rosenberg argues, in fact, that post Communist Eastern Europe is another world, to be more precise, another moral world. She contends that Eastern Germans as well as Poles, Slovaks and Czechs are suffering from their past, from the former totalitarian rule.
She says that it dulled the moral sensibility and personal responsibility to the society, the debilities to overcome if these countries want to move forward to the progress and succeed on their way. But the thing is that Ms Rosenberg did not have the long experience of communication with those people. She even doesnt know that the sense of personal responsibility of German nation is much more powerful then the one of the Americans for example. In Poland one of the greatest symbols of Communist past is the former Communist Party first secretary, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. His decision to impose martial law in 1981 has become the point of great historical debates. Creating the portrait of the general on par with the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann Rosenberg takes care not to portrait him as a monster.
The Essay on United Nations General Assembly
UN: United Nations The United Nations was established on October 29, 1945. The United Nations was formed right after World War 2. It was also formed for international assembly of Nations to bring world peace. The United Nations is the successor of the league of Nations, a kind of the same organization formed after World War 1 that failed to stop another war. The United Nations was first outlined ...
Neither she says much good about him. The reader is reminded that this is the man who observed passively the Gomulka purges in the late 50th, as well as the Jewish purges in 1967. General Jaruzelski led Polish troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968. The former first party secretary has been accused of treason for declaring a martial law in 1981. This strange trial has become a point of a public historical debate on whether Jaruzelski had any chance to impose it. Both cases seem strong to the author. On one hand Jaruzelski had to declare martial law not to allow the Soviet invasion as it happened to Czechoslovakia in 1968.
On the other hand Rosenberg points out that the Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan and the invasion in Poland would stretch their resources too thin. She presumes that the thing that really scared Jaruzelski was the fate of Imre Nagy, the Hungarian leader, executed by the Soviets in 1956 after the invasion in rebellious Hungary. But by these points Rosenberg shows nothing but her own ignorance. In 1981 the Soviet Army consisted of about 1.6 million of soldier and officers, of those about 200,000 at a time (they had a personnel rotation there) were bogged in Afghanistan. Can anyone tell us where did Ms Rosenberg see the lack of resources in Soviet Army? Jaruzelski behaved wisely when proclaiming the martial law. Unlike Rosenberg he knew about the atrocities committed by the Soviets in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and did as much as he could to save his people from the same fate.
It appears that General Jaruzelski was accused in his own political wisdom. Ask any Pole about the Jewish purges. What will he answer you? The most common answer would sound like:So what? The passiveness of Jaruzelski during the events of 1956 and 1967 (the years of most extensive purges) is not the question his personal morality but the one of the traditions of the Polish nation as well as all other European nations. The famous Holocaust would be impossible without the general approval of the entire German nation, for example. The same things can be said about French, Spanish, English, Russians, Ukrainians as well as Dutch, Belgians and every other European nation. All of them had Jewish purges in their history.
The Term Paper on Ukraine to Soviet Union
The breakup of the Soviet Union was a pivotal event of the 20the century that changed significantly the political environment of the world. Million of people in Eastern Europe awakened from a bad dream as the communism collapsed. Poland and Ukraine are two of the countries that have come out of the Communist block and embarked in a transition, from the general characteristics of a Communist ...
No one denies it and few show any signs of remorse. Why should Jaruzelski be accused in his passiveness? Concerning the personal morality of Ms Rosenberg let us read the following:Most Communist repression should not be judged in a court of law. She appears to contradict to the World practice of dealing with military criminals. Goebbels, Hoering, Keitel, Jodl and others were sentenced to death mainly because of the horrible atrocities of Holocaust. But the Holocaust itself seems to be no more than a childish trick when compared to the atrocities of Communists. So why should we not judge them in a court of law? Almost six years after Communism’s collapse it is clear that there is a direct link between whether or not a country has condemned its totalitarian legacy and what its democratic prospects are. In countries like the Czech Republic, East Germany, and Poland, where a reckoning with the past has at least been attempted, democracy is stable and peace assured. At the other extreme, countries such as Serbia and Russia, where the Communist myth has hardly been punctured, threaten their own citizens as well as their neighbors.
I wonder why she does it. We may get a clue from the passage in The Haunted Land, where she writes that “fascism espouses repugnant ideas, but Communism’s ideas of equality, solidarity, social justice, an end to misery, and power to the oppressed are indeed beautiful. The New Socialist Man – tireless, cheerful, clean, brave, thrifty, and kind to animals [sic!] – is an ideal all humanity should aspire to reach.” Ms Rosenberg comes close to suggesting that Stalin’s victims were murdered in a good cause. It seems that she doesnt know the statistics of Communist repressions. She certainly does not object to holocaust denial when it denies the Soviet holocaust. Then it becomes “valuable” and a “challenge [to] conventional wisdom.” Let us be critical to the creation of Tina Rosenberg.
The Essay on Could Something Like The Holocaust Happen Today
Could Something Like the Holocaust Happen Today? Today, many people think that the ideas of Communism were being wrongly interpreted and that they are essentially good for humankind. However, they obviously do not know the story of Cambodian genocide, which took place between 1975 and 1978. This genocide came as a direct result of practical implementation of Communist philosophy in its purest ...
It is just a very long college essay that mistakenly (or not mistakenly) won the Pulitzer Prize and nothing more..
