In communist times, the law enforcement agencies – primarily the police, the customs and the secret service – were instruments of naked aggression against dissidents, non-conformists and those who fell out of favour. In the centre of immeasurable corruption, policemen were often more dreaded than criminals. Customs officers enriched themselves by resorting to extortion, bribe taking and acts of straightforward expropriation. The secret services often ran a state within a state, replete with militias, prisons, a court system, a parallel financial system and trading companies. Again, the situation hasn't changed much. Perhaps with the exception of the secret services, all these phenomena still exist and in the open.
And then there is the media – the wastebasket of post communist societies, the cesspool of influence peddling and calumny. Journalists are easily bought and sold and their price is ever decreasing. They work in mouthpieces of business interests masquerading as newspapers or electronic media. They receive their instructions – to lie, to falsify, to ignore, to emphasize, to suppress, to extort, to inform, to collaborate with the authorities – from their Editor in Chief. They trade news for advertising. Some of them are involved in all manner of criminal activities, others are simply unethical in the extreme. They all have pacts with Mammon. People do not believe a word these contortionists of language and torturers of meaning write or say. It is by comparing these tampered and biased sources that people reach their own conclusions within their private medium.
One should hope that the disillusionment of the West is near. Post communist societies are sick and their institutions are a travesty. As is often the case with the mentally ill, there is a strong resistance to treatment and recovery. The options are two: to disengage – or to commit to an asylum with force-feeding, forced administering of medication and constant monitoring. The worst behaviour is to go on pretending that the problem does not exist, or that it is much less serious than it really is. Denial and repression are the very sources of dysfunction. They have to be fought. And sometimes the patient's own welfare – not to mention that of his environment – requires arm-twisting or the infliction of pain. There is a kernel of good people in every society. In the post communist societies, this kernel and suppressed and mocked and sometimes callously silenced. To give these people a voice should be the first priority of the West. But this cannot be done by colluding with their oppressors. The West has to choose – and now.
(Article written on December 10, 1999 and published January 10, 2000
in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 1)
Diasporas and Modern States
A speech given at the meeting of the Canada-Macedonia Chamber of Commerce in Toronto, Canada on December 4th, 1999
Distinguished Guests,