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 In 1995, while en route to the Fourth UN World Conference of Women in Beijing, I was reading a book called "Wild Swans" by the Chinese author Jung Chang. The book told the sad story of three generations of Chang women and the history of China. At that moment, I thought that this story could have been written about my family and about almost any Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian family that survived the Soviet occupation.
There is not one family in the Baltic States, that does not have its own Siberian story to tell and the loved ones who disappeared in those vast frozen lands. All of our stories are the same. The dates and places of deportations are the same. The atrocities and the denials of human rights are the same. Only the names are different.
It is true that I was born in Siberia, six time zones away from my home in Latvia. In 1941 my mother Ligita was 14 and a half years old when she, together with my grandfather Janis and my grandmother Emilija, were deported to Siberia by Soviet authorities. Six month later my grandfather died of starvation in GULAG. My grandmother died in 1950 while in forced settlement. She was malnourished and exhausted by work that was beyond any human strength.
In 1949 my father Aivars, then 17 years old, was deported together with his mother Milda. Their only crime was that they were considered family members of "Bandit". "Bandit" was the name given to all resistance and Aivers father, Aleksandrs continued to be a resistant against the Soviet occupiers. My grandfather was arrested and tortured in the cellars of the KGB. Later he was deported to the GULAG, and there he died in 1953.
My parents met and married in Siberia. I was born in the village of Togur, Tomsk region. Twice a month my parents had to register me at the commandant's office to ensure the Soviet Security Services, that their baby girl had not left her designated place of exile. Thus, my destiny was not to be free. As my father and mother did not wish to provide the Soviets with more human slaves - I have no brothers and sisters. Following Stalin's death, the deportees were allowed to return to Latvia. And so on May 1957 my family's Siberian odyssey was about to come to an end. My mother had endured 16 years, my father and grandmother 8 years and I four years and five months.
During 50 years of twentieth century Latvia lived through three consecutive occupations: Soviet, German, than Soviet again resulting in an enormous loss of human life and repressions. The number of Latvians who suffered under both the totalitarian regimes, who were killed in repressions, deported, imprisioned in death camps, killed in wars initiated by foreign powers, who were mobilized by Soviets and the Nazis into their armies as well as those who were forced into emigration has not been fully documented. It is estimated with certainty that this number exceeds 600,000 lives not including unborn children. To this massive number we have to add 70,000 Latvian Jews, who were exterminated by Nazis. The more facts we gather, the higher the numbers continue to grow.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am reminding you of these horrifying facts and telling you my personal story because I am convinced that the world must learn about the crimes which where committed behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe and in Baltic States. During that time the free Western nations were building a democratic and prosperous Europe where the rule of law and respect for human rights governed.
Among the debts which the 20th century has left in Europe there is one particular. Not only did the Iron Curtain excluded the captured nations from our common Europe home - the Iron Curtain also excluded 50 years of our true history from European history. The false historical version about our countries that was circulated until 1990 was entirely censured, and the facts were rewritten and slanted in compliance with the political goals and ideology of the ruling communist regimes.
It was only after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the archives were opened for research and the memories of those who survived the repressions and GULAG were published, did the truth begin to be known to the outside world. The documentary evidence as well as the appalling stories of the victims confirmed the criminal nature of the soviet communist regime.
I am deeply convinced that it is the duty of my generation to write a complete and truthful history of the Iron Curtain. We must bring to light the crimes commited in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. If this is not done then the Europe's history will stay incomplete, partial and dishonest.
The mental division between Western and Eastern Europe caused by 50 years of our totalitarian domination still exists and must be overcome. In this rather short period of freedom of 15 years, the Eastern Europeans and Balts were able to join the European train which left its point of departure long ago. For us it required vision, political will, and a national concensus to implement all the unpopular economic, financial and social reforms needed to join the other Europeans in the Union. However, we must be aware that to eliminate the last mental scars of the Iron Curtain will take much more of our common effort and of our common good will. There are hundreds and hundreds of signs confirming that the appalling revelations and facts about the crimes of Soviet totalitarianism, although familiar to most Western scholars, have not penetrated Western consciousness.
Just a few examples: could you imagine that a fashion designer would seek his artistic inspiration in SS black leather coats and use a swastika as a decorative element? No! However, it is done quite often with Soviet military paraphernalia by Western haute couturiers. Is it acceptable for Europeans to sea portraits of Hitler or Mussolini as publicity? Certainly not! While in Paris in 1996 I was shocked by giant publicity posters with portraits of Stalin and Mao ornating the underground stations. It saddened me that no one understood the reason why I was so revolted. Another observation: In Western flea markets no one dares to openly sell Nazi regalia as is done with Soviet symbols. I could continue the list of these seemingly minor incidents to illustrate that for fare too many people the crimes of Stalin do not inspire the same visceral reaction as the crimes of Hitler.
There is a set of circumstances explaining the absence of popular feeling about the tragedy of Eastern Europe and Baltic States. Until 1996 plausible information about Camps and the scale of repressions were scarce. There were no archives accessible for scholars and research. The first eyewitness reports of the GULAG were often dismissed because it was difficult to believe that the recited horrors could possibly be true.
A slight change in the Western attitude appeared with the publication of the oral history of the camps, The GULAG Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. With Perestroika and Glasnost a new wave of revelations were brought to the forefront. Since the 1990s archives have been available and have resulted in the publication of many fundamental research books on the GULAG and Soviet terror. However, their impact was limited mostly to scholars and had little interest to the public at large. It confirms the fact that until now the social, cultural and political framework for knowledge of the GULAG is not widely known.
Perhaps the explanation is related to a different perception of time we have. In the West people perceive all that happened in Eastern Europe and Baltic States is an ancient history. For us it is still the recent past, a living memory.
The lack of genuine public interest is perfectly sensed by media market and the cinema industry where films that reflect what really happened behind the Iron Curtain are rare. Only a few like Good-bye, Lenin, were able to attract public interest.
The same can be said about the visual documents. Nazis were so proud of their righteousness and so convinced in the Reich lasting 1000 years that they carefully photo documented and filmed their crimes against humanity. Today these horrifying images have become a part of humanity's collective consciousness. On the contrary, the Soviets were fare-sighted enough not to bequeath visual evidence for the future. We all know what power-images have over public perception. This lack of visual imaginary partly explains why the public feels unconcerned about Soviet camps and its victims.
We also have to speak about the sensitive issue of attitude towards Soviet totalitarianism among the Western Left and Western Right. The Left for years struggled to find the explanation and the excuses for Soviet terror. Not just communists but many socialists were flirting with the Soviets. Many still are not willing or perhaps not able to admit that their judgement of Soviet totalitarianism was wrong. In 1997 when the Livre Noir du Communisme was published in France - it caused a controversy. The Socialist Prime Minister tried to diminish the facts as exaggeration. While the Western Right was unmasking the Soviet regime as evil, they were relutant to admit that there was a darker side to the Allied victory in the Second World War: that Stalin was expanding his GULAG system right after the victory and liberation of Hitler's concentration camps. It must not be comfortable to recognize that one mass murderer was defeated with the help of another mass murderer. No one wants to remember Yalta, where the deal with Stalin on Eastern Europe and the Baltic States was concluded for sake of peace in Europe.
With the feeling of a long awaited justice coming full circle, I was listening to President George Bush on the 5th of May 2005 in Riga. He acknowledged, "For much of Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end oppression. The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history."
I am convinced that within the framework of a policy for promoting democratic awareness, an integral part of which is also assessment and condemnation of all totalitarian regimes and their crimes, an international commission for assessing the crimes of the Soviet totalitarian communist regime must be established.
I also strongly believe that the victims of Siberia, Budapest, Timisuara, Prague and Solidarnost deserve a thorough investigation of the historical and legal aspects of Soviet totalitarianism. For this purpose we must establish an international research institute. Its summarized findings will provide information to international community for the condemnation of totalitarian communist regime.
To conclude I would like to tell that I wrote a book about my family's story. For me it was a painful journey into past. I felt as if I was wandering night after night through Kafkaesque labyrinths of horror. My book was published in November 2001 in Riga. It attracted international interest and has been translated in several languages, including Italian. There are still other translations to come. Since March 2005 Mit Ballschuhen im sibirischen Schnee published by HERBIG is available in German.
Pronounced in Berlin, 7th November 2005, for Memento Gulag.
About Sandra Kalniete |
