Arstotzka's communist past

[President Costava]

Among the communist dictatorships under the soviet sphere of influence, Arstotzka's was the poorest and quirkiest. As well as suppressing dissent, the paranoid leaders of the Worker's Communist Party of Arstotzka, banned almost all contact with other countries. Few foreigners ever visited Arstotzka, and hardly any Arstotzkans were allowed abroad.

 

The enemies of the state were sent to prison camps, modelled on Stalin's gulags. The inmates were forced to work on the government's mining and construction projects, and many died as a result of appalling conditions. In total, some 3000 people passed through the camps. In a country of 15.000, almost one person in every five was jailed or displaced by the communists.

 

Today, some 1000 former prisoners are still alive. Embittered and impoverished, they have received only a fraction of the compensation promised by post-communist governments. During a hunger strike in Arstotzka in 1992, one year after the fall of the dictatorship, two former prisoners set themselves alight. One has since died of his burns. Two parties, the Nationalists and the Democrats, have dominated Arstotzka since the fall of communism. Both have paid lip service to the requests lodged by victims of communism, while accusing each other of ignoring them. Rather than aiding reconciliation, Arstotzka's painful past has become an instrument of political coercion.

 

The view that all Arstotzkans suffered alike under communism upsets those who lost more than others. The state's policy toward the past, however, seems tacitly to endorse this view - even if it does not articulate it. Former political prisoners have been promised compensation - but are, in effect, treated little differently compared to other citizens. The secret police's archive, which would reveal who spied upon whom under communism, also remains sealed.

 

The archive originally contained the records of suspected enemies of the state. Much of the information in them had been provided by their close friends, relatives and colleagues. Of the thousands of files amassed over 60 years of dictatorship, officials estimate that only about a few hundreds remain intact. Some have been lost. Others were deliberately destroyed by former communists.

 

"A good portion of the files was destroyed in the early 1990s," says a source in the Ministry of Interior. Through much of the last decades, it seems the archives were allowed to deteriorate. "We found open files, with whole pages torn out and scattered across the floor," the source said. Politicians on both sides, however, defend their management of the archive. Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma insists his government is committed to releasing the files. "Although 20 years have gone by, it is essential for Arstotzka to face the past," he says. "The files should be opened."

 

Kuchma accuses the Democrats - currently in opposition - of contributing to the deterioration of the archives that might ruin their MPs reputations. The Democrats, however, accuse their rivals of making empty promises to the victims of communism. The President of the Republic, Jorji Costava, says the archive is just one of several thorny problems inherited from the dictatorship. He blames the deadlock over the files on the current political elite, which he says is composed of former communists, and former dissidents. "The marriage between the two has created an overlapping identity, which makes it controversial - and difficult - to deal with the past," he says.

 

The ranks of senior Nationalists and Democrats today do indeed include many former communists, as well as those who can claim to have been dissidents. In reality, however, the dissidents who are now in politics were often also close to the center of power during the dictatorship. This is because Arstotzka's regime blurred the distinction between dissidents and loyalists: its most senior officials could simultaneously be suspected and monitored as potential enemies of the state.

 

Many Arstotzkans believe top officials from both parties have something to fear from the archive - either because they were spies, or were spied upon. Selective leaks from the sealed archive have already been used to attack or blackmail prominent figures. Moreover, former secret service officials argue that the fear of the unseen files is far more valuable to politicians than the information within them. "Nothing will happen if we open the files," a former KGB agent who prefers to stay anonymous says. "But nobody is interested in doing so because the past is being used as a political tool."

 

Arstotzka remains one of Eastern Europe's poorest nations. It has had a hard journey out of dictatorship and isolation, enduring bouts of anarchy during the 1990s. Amid this turbulence, the country's former political prisoners have struggled to find their feet. Their property had been confiscated when they were imprisoned. Often, their families were also packed off to labor camps. Those relatives who remained behind were usually ostracized.

 

Released into the chaos that followed communism, the prisoners lacked the resources to build new lives. Some have made their homes in abandoned buildings, and still fear eviction. According to the Ministry of Healthcare that oversees the rehabilitation of former prisoners, many of the detainees suffer from ill health as a result of their internment. Many also married late in life, after their release, and are now struggling to support their young.

Edited September 7, 2013 by President Costava