LN: Student protests prompt reflection of communism

Prague, Feb 28 (CTK) - Czechs kept silent about their communist past and the present Communist Party's (KSCM) role for long and they started to reflect on it only now that students are protesting against the Communists' presence in regional governments, Zbynek Petracek writes in Lidove noviny yesterday.

At first sight, the rebelling students have achieved nothing special. Their protests made Vitezslava Baborova (KSCM) resign as the South Bohemian regional councillor in charge of education, and another south Bohemian councillor Vaclav Kucera is stepping down now over his past as the communist secret service's collaborator, Petracek writes.

The students, a generation born after the 1989 fall of the communist regime, showed an unexpected interest in the KSCM's role in the public administration and in the role the former Communist Party (KSC) played in their parents' lives, Petracek writes.

The students have succeeded in turning the whole society's attention to the issue. This is an important achievement, Petracek says.

Discussions on the Internet show that the people who present themselves as "genuine" right wingers or "genuine" left wingers tend to condemn the rebelling students as romantic young troublemakers who know nothing of life and of the previous regime.

Supporters of "the truth and love" (a motto promoted by the late Vaclav Havel, independent from the right-left ideology), on their part, tend to praise the students' interest as spontaneous and respectable, Petracek writes.

It would be easy to criticise the rebels for "cheap anti-communism" in view of their imperfect orientation in politics and history. True, they do not have enough information or knowledge, due to their low age, but they show an authentic interest in seeking both, Petracek writes.

The interest the Czech students show 23 years after the fall of the communist regime is impossible to overlook, he says.

The 23 years that have elapsed since late 1989 correspond to the period between the 1968 Prague Spring communist reform movement and the end of WWII in 1945 when Czechs regained liberty, which, however, changed to a new totalitarian rule soon, Petracek continues.

There is naturally no totalitarian rule now but still the rebelling students' feeling that something is wrong in their country should not be played down, Petracek says.

The students have unwittingly touched on the consequence of the fact that communism was not much discussed in Czech society in the past two decades. True, a debate has been conducted on the role of the KSC, its crimes, hundreds of executed victims, tens of thousands of imprisoned people and hundreds of thousands of people forced into exile or emigration, Petracek writes.

However, the debate never touched on the "everyday communist life" of Czech families, their bowing to the regime, and the role of "small collaborators" with the communist regime, Petracek says.

In reaction to the students touching on these aspects, many people brand them troublemakers fomenting unrest, while others welcome such trouble making.

The crucial question is whether the former group of Czechs, who tend to prefer an establishment free of turbulences [even including Communists in high posts], prevails over the latter. It may really prevail, judging by former socialist MP Milos Zeman's victory over conservative Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09) in the January direct presidential polls, Petracek writes.

Many resent the rebelling students because they focus on "small fish" among former communist collaborators. However, there is nothing strange about it. "Big fish" is dealt with by revolutionary and denazification tribunals, the secret services and the independent judiciary. The communist infection still plaguing the Czech society's everyday life is a topic also for the rebelling students to address, Petracek writes.

He points to German students' protests in the 1960s when they critically pointed to the dark past of Hans Globke, head of the then Chancellor Kondrad Adenauer's office, and Hans Filbinger, prime minister of Baden-Wuerttenberg.

Germany also brought a different example. Former president Richard von Weizsaecker was the first German leader to say May 1945 was the liberation, not defeat of Germany, though he himself had served in the Wehrmacht before and his father had been a deputy foreign minister and an SS general, Petracek writes.

Weizsaecker reflected on his own family's guilt when he assisted in his father's defence in the Nuremberg Trial, and he eventually publicly drew a conclusion from it, Petracek writes.

In the Czech Republic there are no personalities credibly reflecting on their own communist past and complicity with the communist regime. After 1989, Communists either gained alibi by switching to other parties or they remained members of the KSCM, a party with the word "communist" in its name, Petracek writes.

This long-lasting practice is now viewed as normal or even state-forming by a number of Czechs, who also consider the KSCM's presence in regional governments a clear result of democratic elections. If the rebelling students do not find it normal, the society should thank them for their resistance, Petracek concludes.