Motor Racing And Gallery Motor

The Morning Star reports:

US, French and British troops have marched across Moscow's Red Square for the first time in a Victory Day parade to commemorate the defeat of nazi Germany. The day was marked both by an impressive display of Russia's military might and an emphasis on international co-operation.
More than 26 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died to secure that victory, including more than 8.5m Red Army soldiers.

26 million. It’s a figure that blows your mind away. Yet the Soviet victims of WW2 get very little mention nowadays in the west.

There’s an insidious neo-con inspired campaign to equate the crimes committed under communism with the crimes of Nazism (Seumas Milne has written about it here and here) and to airbrush from history the enormous human sacrificies made by the Russians- and also the Serbs (another people that neocons hate with a vengeance) in the Second World War.

But as Seumas says: “The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sobibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine”

Sixty five years on from the defeat of fascism in Europe, let’s remember the role that the USSR, the UK, the USA, the Serbs and their allies in the various European Resistance movements played in that gallant endeavour.

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video: szolnokinaplo

A very happy May Day!

To mark the occasion here’s some great footage of the 1970 May Day parade from Szolnok in Hungary. Watching it, and hearing from my wife Zsuzsanna, about how much people enjoyed these socialist-era May Day parades and the spirit of camaraderie they engendered, I am reminded of that wonderful old One Nation Tory Sir Ian Gilmour’s views about neoliberalism.

economic liberalism, a la Professor Hayek, because of its starkness and its failure to create a sense of community, is not a safeguard of political freedom but a threat to it...'

Dave Cameron, who next week may well become British Prime Minister, can talk all he likes about building a ‘Big Society’ in Britain, but so long as we cling to an ultra-competitive, dog-eat-dog capitalist system, we can only expect further atomisation and social unrest. The neoliberal economic order which all three of our main parties support, doesn’t build solidarity or a sense of community- it destroys it as it puts profits before people and encourages us to see other human beings as rivals, not comrades. And we are all the poorer for it.

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continues apace....

With rising unemployment, rising poverty, huge disparities of wealth and a massive increase in violent crime, is it any wonder that a majority of Hungarians (and not just my wife, Zsuzsanna), believe that things were better before neoliberalism came to the country in 1989?

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1989 unleashed across the region and then the former Soviet Union free-market shock therapy, mass robbery as privatisation, vast increases in inequality, and poverty and joblessness for tens of millions. Reunification in Germany in fact meant annexation, the takeover and closure of most of its industry, a political purge of more than a million teachers and other white-collar workers, a loss of women's rights, closure of free nurseries and mass unemployment……..

The western failure to recognise the shocking price paid by many east Europeans for a highly qualified freedom – the Economist this week dismissed them as "the old, the timid, the dim" – is only exceeded by the refusal to acknowledge that the communist system had benefits as well as obvious costs…….

Der Spiegel this year found that 57% of eastern Germans believed the GDR had "more good sides than bad sides", and even younger people rejected the idea that the state had been a dictatorship. Just as only one in five Hungarians believes that the country has changed for the better since 1989, only 11% of Bulgarians think ordinary people have benefited from the changes and most Russians and Ukrainians regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

This two-sided, Janus-like nature of 1989 is also reflected in its global and ideological impact. It kicked off the process that led to the end of the cold war. But by removing the world's only other superpower from the global stage, it also destroyed the constraints on US global power and paved the way for wars from the Gulf and Yugoslavia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can read the rest of Seumas Milne's brilliant piece here.And what a bunch of obnoxious patronising wallies the folk at The Economist are, branding 89% of Bulgarians and 80% of Hungarians 'old, timid and dim' for not sharing their enthusiasm for neoliberal capitalism.

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HUNGARY: NOVEMBER 2009
A woman sits bolt upright in the middle of the night. She jumps out of bed and rushes to the bathroom to look in the medicine cabinet. Then, she runs into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. Finally, she dashes to the window and looks out into the street. Relieved, she returns to the bedroom. Her husband asks, "What's wrong with you?" "I had a terrible nightmare", she says, "I dreamed we could still afford to buy medicine, that the refrigerator was absolutely full, and that the streets were safe and clean. I also dreamed that you had a job, that we could afford to pay our gas and electricity bills and the Hungarian national football team was one of the best in the world.

"How is that a nightmare?" asks her husband. The woman shakes her head, "I thought the communists were back in power."

A Magyarised version of this great Bulgarian joke told by Maria Todorova.
Hat tip: Olching.

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video:stalinleninmao.

economic liberalism, a la Professor Hayek, because of its starkness and its failure to create a sense of community, is not a safeguard of political freedom but a threat to it...'
I think Sir Ian Gilmour, the old 'One Nation' Tory, had the answer.

Perhaps if the communism had been replaced with other forms of socialism post-1989 there would not now be so much nostaglia for communism in eastern Europe. But it was not. It was replaced by a system which put the interests of Goldman Sachs and international finance capital above ordinary people. The selfish, individualistic ‘elbow’ society, to use Bruni de la Motte's’s excellent phrase, came to eastern Europe and most people, surprise, surprise, don’t like it.

But of course, eastern Europeans aren’t supposed to say that. For so-called western ‘liberals’, it’s ok for anti-communists from emigre families to pen attack pieces on communism, but not for those who actually lived in the countries in question to write about how much they enjoyed their lives there as Bruni de la Motte does here and my wife Zsuzsanna did here.

As our good friend Olching puts in on this thread in replying to a western ‘liberal’ who castigates Bruni de la Motte for writing positively about her life in the GDR:

How dare they, eh, have any fond memories, when clearly they should remember nothing but the cliches we want them to remember!

Postscript: Isn’t it great to have this article published on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall- to remind people who have been the main beneficiaries of the political changes of 20 years ago.

UPDATE: There's a great post by former GDR citizen 'berlin girl' in the comments section to Bruni de la Motte's piece, which I think says it all.

Our lives in the GDR were not just about stasi and the wall, we had parties, got married had kids and had normal lives as well. We didnt take to the streets so that we could have mcdonalds and starbucks, we took to the streets for autonomy and self-determination. We didnt want to be just another part of West Germany, we wanted our own chance at a fairer society. That chance was taken from us by the likes of Kohl and the Western countries who thought they knew best. And the criticism of nostalgia, well, sorry, but how many of you feel nostalgic for your past? Why is it only the east germans who arent allowed to feel nostalgic? As for leaving in droves, yes, we all wanted to travel. But we almost all of us came back. Who wouldnt want to check out the eiffel tower and piccadilly circus, but it doesnt mean youd want to stay!

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This piece of mine, on the human cost of the political changes in eastern Europe in 1989, appears in the Morning Star.

Make 1989 the year you visit the GDR, the brochure of Berolina Travel proclaimed. So that's what my university friend Rob and I decided to do.

Neither of us were card-carrying members of the Young Communist League, but neither were we anti-communist cold war warriors. We were just two young people keen to find out for ourselves what life was really like behind the so-called Iron Curtain.

Twenty years on, the memories of my trip to the German Democratic Republic are still extremely vivid. We travelled to East Germany by rail via Frankfurt. The contrast between Frankfurt and Erfurt, the first city we arrived at over the border, could not have been more striking.

There was the lack of neon and the refreshing absence of advertising. Everything seemed less frenetic - the pace of life was much slower.

The GDR was getting ready to celebrate its 40th birthday. The country had come a long way since its foundation from the ruins of World War II, as John Green has described in recent Morning Star articles.

We had been conditioned to expect a very poor country, but were surprised to see that most people were better dressed than back home in Britain and that the shops, far from being empty, were well-stocked. It was nice to see main streets not dominated by chain stores - and not a Mcdonald's in sight.

Instead of Western fast-food chains serving unhealthy junk food, the GDR, in common with other socialist countries, was full of publicly owned self-service restaurants where ordinary people could eat good hearty fare at affordable prices in a communal atmosphere.

I remember going to one restaurant in Magdeburg and chatting to a young married couple sitting on the same table. We got on so well that we exchanged addresses after just half an hour together.

Contrary to its usual depiction in the West as a grey, unwelcoming place, I found the GDR to be one of the friendliest places I had ever visited. The best thing about it was the people - kind, friendly and extremely helpful. Interesting, well-read and well-educated people who always looked you in the eye and didn't want to cheat you.

I experienced the same thing on my other visit to a European communist country, Yugoslavia, also in 1989. I stayed in a small guest house close to Lake Bohinj. The owner was a committed communist and strong supporter of the partisans. Each evening he would invite the guests to sit, eat and drink with him and he would tell stories of how the partisans defeated the nazis in WWII.
He told all the guests to feel as if they were at home. He even washed his guest's dirty laundry for no extra charge. He not only advocated socialism, he lived a socialist life - helping others for no monetary reward. He was one of the kindest men I have ever met in my life and I remembered thinking there and then that a system that can produce such warm-hearted and generous people surely must have something going for it.

Not long after my visit to the GDR, the Berlin Wall came down. People I had spoken to in the GDR said that their main criticism of the government was the restriction on foreign travel. But, as the recent BBC documentary series The Lost World Of Communism showed, there was no desire, even among those who did take part in street demonstrations in the autumn of 1989, for a wholesale dismantling of the socialist system. What many people had wanted was a less authoritarian form of socialism - no-one was calling for mass privatisation and the introduction of Thatcherism.

In the mid-1990s I returned to eastern Europe to live and work in Hungary. After four years of harsh economic reforms the Hungarian people had just voted into power the Hungarian Socialist Party. But the hopes of the voters for a government which would retain the best aspects of the communist system were to be dashed. Capital had no intention of allowing any vestiges of socialism to survive in eastern Europe.
Under pressure from Western financial institutions prime minister Gyula Horn, who had earlier attacked the idea of energy privatisation, changed tack. He appointed a fanatically neoliberal economics professor called Lajos Bokros to introduce an austerity package.

While in Britain Thatcherite media commentators enthused over the eastern European countries' transition to a "free market economy," I witnessed at first hand the pain that such policies were causing to ordinary people.

Pensioners who had lived relatively well under the old regime were now having to go from shop to shop to try to save a crucial few forints as prices of basic foodstuffs rocketed. People who had never experienced unemployment under communism, when it did not exist, were forced on to the scrapheap as their factories closed. Beggars - almost non-existent during communism - appeared once again on Budapest's streets.
Yet as harsh as conditions were in Hungary in 1995, they are even worse today.

With the economy shrinking by 7.5 per cent in the second quarter this year and unemployment up to 10 per cent, it's hardly surprising that, according to a recent poll, just one in five Hungarians believe their country has changed for the better since 1989.

It's a similar story of economic hardship across the region, yet the rise in poverty in eastern Europe since 1989 is seldom mentioned by neoliberal commentators in the West when they pen their articles celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the "liberation" of the people from communism.

Twenty years on from the historic events of 1989 it is clear that what occurred was not so much a liberation but a colonisation. For while ordinary people have seen their living standards plummet and have lost many of the things they once took for granted, such as secure employment, affordable gas and electricity prices, cheap public transport and good-quality education and health care, the giants of Western capital have enjoyed a financial bonanza.

In Hungary alone, over £97 billion of publicly owned assets were sold off in the period 1990-2007, many to Western multinationals.

There was no office of Goldman Sachs in Budapest in 1989. There is now.
There were no Tescos in Hungary in 1989. There are now over 100.
And there was no Coca-Cola for sale when I visited the GDR. The Coca-Cola corporation now dominates the soft drinks market throughout the region.

So if you watched multimillionaire pop-star Bono perform last night in the MTV concert in Berlin to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, remember that it's capital - and not the ordinary people of eastern Europe - that's been the main beneficiary of the political changes of 20 years ago.

Never in the history of the world has the fall of a single wall proved quite so profitable.

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This article by my wife Zsuzsanna Clark, on her positive experiences of growing up under communism, (a digest of her forthcoming book ‘Goulash and Solidarity’), appears in today's Mail on Sunday.

Above, some memories of growing up in the Hungarian People’s Republic, put to that wonderfully poignant song Iskolatáska by Demjen Ferenc.(video by 'Agness 401')

AS HAPPY AS A SQUIRREL UP A TREE
Zsuzsanna Clark
Next month Europe will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Zsuzsanna Clark was born and raised in Hungary but after meeting her British husband, she moved to the UK in 1999. Here she explains why, contrary to Western beliefs, there were many benefits to life behind the Iron Curtain.......

When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the Seventies and Eighties, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state.

They are invariably disappointed when I explain that the reality was quite different, and communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact, rather a fun place to live.

The communists provided everyone with guaranteed employment, good education and free healthcare. Violent crime was virtually non-existent.

But perhaps the best thing of all was the overriding sense of camaraderie, a spirit lacking in my adopted Britain and, indeed, whenever I go back to Hungary today. People trusted one another, and what we had we shared.

I was born into a working-class family in Esztergom, a town in the north of Hungary, in 1968. My mother, Julianna, came from the east of the country, the poorest part. Born in 1939, she had a harsh childhood.

She left school aged 11 and went straight to work in the fields. She remembers having to get up at 4am to walk five miles to buy a loaf of bread. As a child, she was so hungry she often waited next to the hen for it to lay an egg. She would then crack it open and swallow the yolk and the white raw.

It was discontent with these conditions of the early years of communism that led to the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

The shock waves brought home to the communist leadership that they could consolidate their position only by making our lives more tolerable. Stalinism was out and 'goulash communism' - a unique brand of liberal communism - was in.

Janos Kadar, the country's new leader, transformed Hungary into the 'happiest barracks' in Eastern Europe. We probably had more freedoms than in any other communist country.

One of the best things was the way leisure and holiday opportunities were opened up to all. Before the Second World War, holidays were reserved for the upper and middle classes. In the immediate post-war years too, most Hungarians were working so hard rebuilding the country that holidays were out of the question.

In the Sixties though, as in many other aspects of life, things changed for the better. By the end of the decade, almost everyone could afford to go away, thanks to the network of subsidised trade-union, company and co-operative holiday centres.

My parents worked in Dorog, a nearby town, for Hungaroton, a state-owned record company, so we stayed at the factory's holiday camp at Lake Balaton, 'The Hungarian Sea'.

The camp was similar to the sort of holiday camps in vogue in Britain at the same time, the only difference being that guests had to make their own entertainment in the evenings - there were no Butlins-style Redcoats.

Some of my earliest memories of living at home are of the animals my parents kept on their smallholding. Rearing animals was something most people did, as well as growing vegetables. Outside Budapest and the big towns, we were a nation of Tom and Barbara Goods.

My parents had about 50 chickens, pigs, rabbits, ducks, pigeons and geese. We kept the animals not just to feed our family but also to sell meat to our friends. We used the goose feathers to make pillows and duvets.

The government understood the value of education and culture. Before the advent of communism, opportunities for the children of the peasantry and urban working class, such as me, to rise up the educational ladder were limited. All that changed after the war.

The school system in Hungary was similar to that which existed in Britain at the time. Secondary education was divided into grammar schools, specialised secondary schools, and vocational schools. The main differences were that we stayed in our elementary school until the age of 14, not 11.

There were also evening schools, for children and adults. My parents, who had both left school young, took classes in mathematics, history and Hungarian literature and grammar.

I loved my schooldays, and in particular my membership of the Pioneers - a movement common to all communist countries.

Many in the West believed it was a crude attempt to indoctrinate the young with communist ideology, but being a Pioneer taught us valuable life skills such as building friendships and the importance of working for the benefit of the community. 'Together for each other' was our slogan, and that was how we were encouraged to think.

As a Pioneer, if you performed well in your studies, communal work and school competitions, you were rewarded with a trip to a summer camp. I went every year because I took part in almost all the school activities: competitions, gymnastics, athletics, choir, shooting, literature and library work.

On our last night at Pioneer camp we sang songs around the bonfire, such as the Pioneer anthem: 'Mint a mokus fenn a fan, az uttoro oly vidam' ('We are as happy as a squirrel on a tree'), and other traditional songs. Our feelings were always mixed: sad at the prospect of leaving, but happy at the thought of seeing our families again.

Today, even those who do not consider themselves communists look back at their days in the Pioneers with great affection.

Hungarian schools did not follow the so-called 'progressive' ideas on education prevalent in the West at the time. Academic standards were extremely high and discipline was strict. My favourite teacher taught us that without mastery of Hungarian grammar we would lack confidence to articulate our thoughts and feelings. We could make only one mistake if we wanted to attain the highest grade.

Unlike Britain, there were 'viva voce' exams in Hungary in every subject. In literature, for example, set texts had to be memorised and recited and then the student would have to answer questions put to them orally by the teacher. Whenever we had a national celebration, I was among those asked to recite a poem or verse in front of the whole school.

Culture was regarded as extremely important by the government. The communists did not want to restrict the finer things of life to the upper and middle classes - the very best of music, literature and dance were for all to enjoy.

This meant lavish subsidies were given to institutions including orchestras, opera houses, theatres and cinemas. Ticket prices were subsidised by the State, making visits to the opera and theatre affordable.

'Cultural houses' were opened in every town and village, so provincial, working-class people such as my parents could have easy access to the performing arts, and to the best performers.

Programming on Hungarian television reflected the regime's priority to bring culture to the masses, with no dumbing down.

When I was a teenager, Saturday night primetime viewing typically meant a Jules Verne adventure, a poetry recital, a variety show, a live theatre performance, or an easy Bud Spencer film.

Much of Hungarian television was home-produced, but quality programmes were imported, not just from other Eastern Bloc countries but from the West, too.
Hungarians in the early Seventies followed the trials and tribulations of Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga just as avidly as British viewers had done a few years earlier. The Onedin Line was another popular BBC series I enjoyed watching, along with David Attenborough documentaries.

However, the government was alive to the danger of us turning into a nation of four-eyed couch potatoes. Every Monday was 'family night', when State television was taken off the air to encourage families to do other things together. Others called it 'family planning night', and I am sure the figures showing the proportion of children conceived on Monday nights under communism would make interesting reading.

Although we lived well under 'goulash communism' and there was always enough food for us to eat, we were not bombarded with advertising for products we didn't need.
Throughout my youth, I wore hand-me-down clothes, as most young people did. My school bag was from the factory where my parents worked. What a difference to today's Hungary, where children are bullied, as they are in Britain, for wearing the
'wrong' brand of trainers.

Like most people in the communist era, my father was not money-obsessed.
As a mechanic he made a point of charging people fairly. He once saw a broken-down car with an open bonnet - a sight that always lifted his heart. It belonged to a West German tourist. My father fixed the car but refused payment - even a bottle of beer. For him it was unnatural that anyone would think of accepting money for helping someone in distress.

When communism in Hungary ended in 1989, I was not only surprised, but saddened, as were many others. Yes, there were people marching against the government, but the majority of ordinary people - me and my family included - did not take part in the protests.

Our voice - the voice of those whose lives were improved by communism - is seldom heard when it comes to discussions of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.
Instead, the accounts we hear in the West are nearly always from the perspectives of wealthy emigrés or anti-communist dissidents with an axe to grind.

Communism in Hungary had its downside. While trips to other socialist countries were unrestricted, travel to the West was problematic and allowed only every second year.
There were petty restrictions and needless layers of bureaucracy and freedom to criticise the government was limited. Yet despite this, I believe that, taken as a whole, the positives outweighed the negatives.

Twenty years on, most of these positive achievements have been destroyed.

People no longer have job security. Poverty and crime is on the increase. Working-class people can no longer afford to go to the opera or theatre. As in Britain, TV has dumbed down to a worrying degree - ironically, we never had Big Brother under communism, but we have it today.

Most sadly of all, the spirit of camaraderie that we once enjoyed has all but disappeared.

In the past two decades we may have gained shopping malls, multi-party ' democracy', mobile phones and the internet.

But we have lost a whole lot more.

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This article of mine appears in the First Post.

Twenty years ago this month, the downtrodden people of eastern Europe took to the streets and rose up against their communist oppressors. The corrupt tyrannical regimes, universally despised, were swept away by this unstoppable surge of 'people power'. Free elections were then held and everyone lived happily ever after.

So goes the standard Western version of the historic events of October and November 1989, brought to you faithfully by CNN and Fox News.

There's just one thing wrong with the narrative: it's a myth.

It wasn't the strength of public opposition that ended communist rule over eastern Europe - but the actions of leading communists themselves. And the country which played the pivotal role in the dramatic events of 1989 was Hungary.

It was Hungary's communist government which in early January 1989 permitted the establishment of non-communist parties and allowed freedom of assembly and association. It was Hungary's government which made the fateful decision to open to East Germans the country's border with Austria, triggering the exodus of thousands of East German holidaymakers to the West. ("It was quite obvious to me that this would be the first step in a landslide-like series of events," Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn said later).

Even before the demonstrations of the autumn, the Hungarian government had already negotiated with anti-communist groups over the country's transition to a non-communist system.

From 1956-88, Hungary had been led by a committed communist, Janos Kadar, 'The Good Comrade' of Roger Gough's 2006 biography. Kadar had warned that "those who joined us (the communist party) for selfish, personal reasons for a career or other motives will be asked to leave". But by the 1980s, the upper echelons of Hungary's ruling communist party was full of people who had little - if any- ideological commitment to the ideals of Marx and Lenin.

These self-styled 'reformers' ousted Kadar in May 1988, and after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told the UN Assembly in December that year that Soviet troops would withdraw from eastern Europe, the final decisive moves to destroy communism could be made.

In an interview with the BBC earlier this year, Imre Pozsgay, Hungary's Minister of State in 1989, admitted that he had been working from within the government in order to bring the system down. "I came to the conclusion that I could do more for my country from the inside, in a position of power than as a marginalised opposition figure."

The great irony is that in Hungary in the late 1980s, there was more support for communism among ordinary people than there was among the ruling communist elite.

Because the accounts we read in the West are nearly always from the hostile perspective of upper or middle-class émigrés or dissidents, the achievements of communism in eastern Europe have tended to be ignored.

For all its faults, communism provided job security, generous welfare provisions (Hungary's system of maternity leave, which provided working mothers with three years' paid leave of absence for each of her children was described as "unique even by international standards"), and good standards of education and health care. It also engendered a spirit of camaraderie that more individualistic, capitalist societies often lack.

Even those who did take to the streets in eastern Europe in 1989 to protest against their governments were not calling for the introduction of free-market capitalism - but for a less authoritarian form of socialism. "Back then we still did believe it would be possible to create another type of socialism. There were many things that disturbed us and made us angry, but nevertheless we had a good life in many ways," Andreas Blazejewski, a street protestor in East Germany said in the BBC documentary The Lost World of Communism.

Of course, the people of eastern Europe didn't get what they wanted: the positive aspects of life under communism were lost along with the negative. As their economies were "reformed" millions lost their jobs and, for many, living standards plummeted.

But for the Hungarian 'insiders' who played such a key role in destroying communism, it was a different story:

• Miklos Nemeth, Hungary's last communist Prime Minister, was appointed Vice-President of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

• Gyula Horn, Hungary's Foreign Minister in 1989, was lauded by the West as he put his country on the path to Nato and EU membership when elected Prime Minister in 1994

• Peter Medgyessy, deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs, became chairman and chief executive officer of Magyar Paribas Bank (a part of the French banking group) before he, too, returned as Hungarian Prime Minister, in 2002.

• Laszlo Kovacs, an important figure at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1986, became the Foreign Minister who negotiated Hungary's entry into Nato in the 1990s and is now a superannuated EU Commissioner in Brussels.

The 'reformers' claimed to be acting in the best interests of Hungary. The system had to change they said - the economy was stagnating and there had to be major 'restructuring'.

It all sounds very reasonable, but when you look at the lucrative careers Hungary's faux-communist elite pursued after 1989, it's hard not to be cynical about their motivation.

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Thought the former Bolshevik revolutionary had been murdered by an NKVD agent in Mexico in 1940?

Then think again.

It’s an internet exclusive, but I can reveal that Leon is alive and in the rudest of health- and still chasing leaders.

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In her excellent review of the National Theatre's new production, 'Burnt By the Sun', Madam Miaow (aka Anna Chen) writes:

Appealing to middle-classes everywhere, BBTS shares a nostalgia for the good old days ven ve danced and played music and sang and the house was alive with culture and Chekovian loveliness before the philistines came and took it all away, pass the vodka. You’d think this would be a chance to have a look at the contrary needs of two contending classes, especially as we may be entering our own pre-revolutionary period if Britain suffers a depression, but no. The workers and their case are nowhere to be seen. You don’t have to agree with the Russian revolution, but at least give us an idea that you understand the dynamics of it.


When it comes to portraying life under communism, workers and their case are sadly nowhere to be seen.

The everyday experiences of life of the majority under communism- are it seems not of interest to theatre producers and film makers. The perspective is always that of the rich and those who lost out from the political changes.

We are always supposed to sympathise with wealthy émigrés from communist countries - like ‘The White Countess’ and not with the majority of ordinary, working class people whose lives were undoubtedly improved by communism.

As my wife Zsuzsanna wrote in her First Post piece on ‘The White Countess’
"No one will deny that crimes were committed under Communism. But ordinary people got rather more back from the "Reds", than they ever did when the film industry's beloved "Whites" ran the show".

In the dominant narrative there is no attempt to explain how communist regimes were all different- no, they were all as totalitarian as each other- all were unspeakably evil and repressive. It’s not allowed to point out that some communist regimes eg Kadar’s Hungary and Tito's Yugoslavia, were actually more liberal than many of the regimes the west was bankrolling in the Cold War in the name of ‘freedom‘.

The fact (not that we're allowed to say it too loudly in the 'free democratic' world we live in), is that many millions of people lived perfectly happy lives under communism, as Zsuzsanna pointed out in her Guardian article on growing up in Hungary in the 1970s and 80s.

Trouble is though, they were the ‘wrong’ kind of people.

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