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The European Dream (Walter Schwimmer)
Despite its huge variety - of features, landscape, languages and people - this smallest of the continents has achieved an unmistakable cultural identity.
Delight at being free and united was obviously part of the transition to a Europe without dividing lines, but so was the fear of fresh divisions. The idea of a genuinely undivided Europe immediately became the main challenge - a challenge which has still to be met. Unprecedented wealth and unimaginable poverty are both part of the picture. Some people have literally boundless freedom to travel, others face endless queuing for visas they may never get. Is the dream of a better Europe acceptable only as long as it stays abstract and demands nothing of us, or are we prepared to sacrifice something for it? The fact that majority of Europeans are currently prepared to do just that to permit enlargement is encouraging. But beyond the EU's new external (Schengen) frontier lies Europe again - and the great challenge of the next decade.
With the Second World War behind us, we western Europeans have had plenty of time to stop thinking in terms of "enemies", but there are places in eastern and south-eastern Europe where the scars are still fresh. Armenia and Azerbaijan joined the Council of Europe together early in 2001 - the first new arrivals since I had taken over as Secretary General. They were still oficially at war, and we hoped that membership would give them a new sense of partnership-and a basis for settling their dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh
Revolution 1989 - The Fall of The Soviet Empire (Victor Sebestyen)
"..we could understand why they left, because there were so many reasons why they couldn't stand being in the GDR (Communist Germany). We always thought about how long we could stay and we set ourselves a limig. Isaid that if I had to go to prison, that would be the time to leave. Or if they took or property away, as we did have a small property, or if they took away the kindergarten that we had organised for children. All of that happened, but we always decided to stay primarily because we felt there were others who wanted the same things as us and we had to stay to keep trying. Somewhere there was always hope." Ulrike Poppe, East German human right activist.
We dont understand that the same Party and government leaders who told us to learn from books falsifying history of the Revolution now vie with each other to touch these coffins as if they were lucky charms. We dont think there is any reason for us to be grateful for being allowed to bury our martyred dead. We dont owe thanks to anyone for the fact that our political organisations can work today... If we can trust our strength, we can put an end to the Communist dictatorship; if we are determined enough we can force the Party to submit itself to free elections; and if we dont lose sight of the ideals of 1956, then we will be able to elect a government that will start immediate negotiations for the swift withdrawal of Russian troops." Viktor Orban, Hungarian dissident / 1989
Miklos Nemeth was appointed as a Communist Prime Minister (in Hungary). "But I knew that under the one party system there was no way to make life better, to make reforms work," he said. "If you wanted to achieve basic reforms you had to make major changes not just in the economy, but politically as well. It meant overthrowing the Communist system."
But the dictator's (Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu) birthday was turned by the regime into a vast commemoration of the life and achievements of one man... The Giant of the Carpathians, The Source of Our Light, The Great Architect, The Morning Star... even Mao Zedong or Stalin might have cringed at some of this nonsense. But Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who enjoyed flattery even more than he did, had no sense of humour or of the ridiculous. They believed the gush written about them and surrounded themselves with fawning toadies and courtiers... The Securitate (Secret service of Communist Romania) was built to inspire fear. The number of agents or informers was not the important thing. The Securitate spread word of its ubiquity and infallibility through innuendo, bluff and double bluff. The public believed it and submitted. "They - the spooks - did not have to keep a watch on people if everybody thought they were being watched".
In 1951 he (Eduard Shevardnadze) married a petite, beautiful and glamorous young woman, Nanuli Tsargareishvili. During the purges (Stalin repressions) she had seen her father, a general noted for his bravery, arrested in the middle of the night. Ge was taken away and shot. She recalled how for a long period afterwards she cried herself to sleep. Later she remembered weeping genuine tears when Stalin died, for she too became a committed Communist.
Gorbachev now lectured Karmal (Communist leader of Afganistan) on how to run a largely Muslim country: If you to survive you will have to broaden the base of the regime. Forget socialism. Make a deal with the truly influential forces in the country, including the Mujahideen commanders. You will have to revive Islam, respect traditions, and try to show the people some tangible benefits from the revolution.
It was predicated on the conviction that the Cold War reality was clear: nobody in the West would risk a confrontation with the Soviets by rushing to the assistance of any revolutionary movement behind the Iron Curtain. Kuron did not urge a...ll-out confrontation with the state. Workers and intellectuals had no prospect of winning a violent struggle with an opponent willing to use its power against them. A strategy far more likely to succeed was to bypass the Party as far as possible and set up unofficial structures alongside the totalitarian ones
We dont understand that the same Party and government leaders who told us to learn from books falsifying history of the Revolution now vie with each other to touch these coffins as if they were lucky charms. We dont think there is any reason for us to be grateful for being allowed to bury our martyred dead. We dont owe thanks to anyone for the fact that our political organisations can work today... If we can trust our strength, we can put an end to the Communist dictatorship; if we are determined enough we can force the Party to submit itself to free elections; and if we dont lose sight of the ideals of 1956, then we will be able to elect a government that will start immediate negotiations for the swift withdrawal of Russian troops." Viktor Orban, Hungarian dissident / 1989
Miklos Nemeth was appointed as a Communist Prime Minister (in Hungary). "But I knew that under the one party system there was no way to make life better, to make reforms work," he said. "If you wanted to achieve basic reforms you had to make major changes not just in the economy, but politically as well. It meant overthrowing the Communist system."
But the dictator's (Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu) birthday was turned by the regime into a vast commemoration of the life and achievements of one man... The Giant of the Carpathians, The Source of Our Light, The Great Architect, The Morning Star... even Mao Zedong or Stalin might have cringed at some of this nonsense. But Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who enjoyed flattery even more than he did, had no sense of humour or of the ridiculous. They believed the gush written about them and surrounded themselves with fawning toadies and courtiers... The Securitate (Secret service of Communist Romania) was built to inspire fear. The number of agents or informers was not the important thing. The Securitate spread word of its ubiquity and infallibility through innuendo, bluff and double bluff. The public believed it and submitted. "They - the spooks - did not have to keep a watch on people if everybody thought they were being watched".
In 1951 he (Eduard Shevardnadze) married a petite, beautiful and glamorous young woman, Nanuli Tsargareishvili. During the purges (Stalin repressions) she had seen her father, a general noted for his bravery, arrested in the middle of the night. Ge was taken away and shot. She recalled how for a long period afterwards she cried herself to sleep. Later she remembered weeping genuine tears when Stalin died, for she too became a committed Communist.
Gorbachev now lectured Karmal (Communist leader of Afganistan) on how to run a largely Muslim country: If you to survive you will have to broaden the base of the regime. Forget socialism. Make a deal with the truly influential forces in the country, including the Mujahideen commanders. You will have to revive Islam, respect traditions, and try to show the people some tangible benefits from the revolution.
It was predicated on the conviction that the Cold War reality was clear: nobody in the West would risk a confrontation with the Soviets by rushing to the assistance of any revolutionary movement behind the Iron Curtain. Kuron did not urge a...ll-out confrontation with the state. Workers and intellectuals had no prospect of winning a violent struggle with an opponent willing to use its power against them. A strategy far more likely to succeed was to bypass the Party as far as possible and set up unofficial structures alongside the totalitarian ones
In the old regime, until 22 December, he (Stanculescu) had been Deputy Minister of Defence, a long time friend of the ruling family, regular dinner companion at the Presidential Palace and one of the chief sycophants of the Ceauşescu court. But he was quick to see the wind change and was among the first senior army officers in Romania to pledge loyalty to the revolution... That morning he had been given an urgent task that required some delicacy an
That morning he had been given an urgent task that required some delicacy and plenty of ruthlessness; he was told to organise the trial of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator for almost a quarter of a century... Pages 1,2
The erstwhile Communist fellow traveller Lean-Paul Sartre described it (Poland) as the land of "socialist surrealism" and said when he visited in the early 1970s he discovered a world of "perfect absurdity". Poland, he said, was a country torn from its past by violent measures imposed by the Communists but so bound to that past that the capital demolished in the war was rebuilt from the pictures of Canaletto... it has a capital where the citizens have taken up residence again in the "old city" which is enirely new... a country where (official) avarage monthly remuneration does not exceed the price of two pairs of socks, but where there is no poverty... a socialist country where church festivals are public holidays... a country of total disorganisation where nonetheless the trains run in time... a country where censorship and satire both flourish... the only country in the socialist bloc whose citizens are freely allowed to buy and sell US dollars but not to possess them... a country where one can talk with the waiter in English or German and the cook in French, but the Minister only through an interpreter. P 24-25
A Ride to Khiva (Frederick Burnaby)
İn St. Petersburg there is one capital Russian theatre, the Alexandrensky, and also a national opera house, the Marensky; but the Alexandrensky is often used for German plays, and thus it sometimes occurs, as on the day when I arrived, that there is no performance going on, in the national idiom, in any theatre in the capital. But, after all, this can be easily explained by the intense dislike many apparently well educated Russians have to their own language. I have often heard them say, "It does very well for moujiki (peasants), but the language for society is French."
On my asking how the English were liked in India, he (Russian officer) simply replied, "You are a great nation. The English people are devoted to their national institutions. How should you like a foreign ruler to establish himself in your country?"
My hostess poured out some tea, and, handing me a cigarette, lit one for herself. This is not at all an exceptional proceeding in Russia, where the women smoke as much as the men. In the best society at St. Petersburg it is not at all an uncommon spectacle to see the married women and aged chaperones indulging in cigarettes. Fortunately the girls have not yet taken to the habit.
The Kirghiz have one great advantage over the other Mohammedan races. They have the opportunity of seeing the girls whom they wish to marry and conversing with them before the bargain is concluded with their parents.
The whole party (in Khiva) were much surprised when I informed them that in England we only put rings in the noses of the unclean animals.
Борьба за власть в Азербайджане- 1917-1920 (Теюб Насиров)
В соответствии с 4 пунктом Договора Турция окозала Азербайджанской Республике военную помошь. В Гяанджу, временную столицу Азербайджана, была направлена военная миссия во главе с командующим турецкими войсками в Закавказье в 1918 году Нури Пашою.
В середине июня Азербайджанское правительство приняло решение о переводе своей миссии из Тифлиса в г. Гянджу. Здесь оно столкнулось с определенными трудностями, заключающимися в том, чтодля буржуазно-помещичьих кругов правительство Ф. Хойского оказалось слишком лево-демократическим, и сложность заключалась в том, что их поддерживал Нури паша. Таким образом, не успев как следует сформироваться, первое Азербайджанское правительство оказалось в политическом кризисе. В результате Национальный Совет был распущен, а правительство-расформировано.
Говоря об эом, М Э Расулзаде подчеркиавл, что уход со сцены учреждения, являющегося хотя бы отчасти народным представительством во временной столице Азербайджана г. Гяндже, без сомнения, должен считаться отступленим демократии и успехом реакционных сил...
Во вновь сформированном правительстве уже не было представителей мусульманского социалистического блока и партии «Гуммет», что означало политический поворот вправо. Даже партия «Мусават» вынуждена была ограничить свою деятельность. Таким образом, Турция будучи империей, недемократическим государством, оказывая Азербайджану военную поддержку, вмешалась в его политическую жизнь. Но несмотря на это, независимость Азербайджанской Республики удалось сохранить, что явилось главным итогом того сложного периода...
Conspirator. Lenin in Exile (Helen Rappaport)
By European standards, nineteenth-century Russia was a backward country, its population largely illiterate and rural, its infrastructure - roads, railways and industry - laggiging far behind that of the West.
Petr Shevyrov, the ringleader of the conspiracy, pushed away the cross as the priest offered it to him, but the last man, with absolute composure, stopped and kissed it before they hanged him, too. His name was Aleksandr Ulyanov.
The young Vladimr had watched him (Aleksandr Ulyanov) at home, huddled over his microscope from the early hours of the morning examining slides. "No my brother won't make revolutionary, I thought then," he later told his wife Nadezhda. "A revolutionary cannot devote so much time to the study of worms."
England- and notably London- had a long tradition of offering refuge and freedom of speech to the politically oppressed. Russian and German political exiles such as Marx, Engels and Herzen had taken refuge here in the 1840s-50s,.. Such was London's reputation for political and racial tolerance that the Italian anarchists who arrived towards the end of the nineteenth century called it "the most comfortable place in the world"..Page 60
After supper on their last evening together, Nadya asked Lenin to accompany Ariadna to the tram stop as ahe didn't know her way round Geneva. En route, Lenin berated her for her liberalism and for being a "bourgeois". Ariadna gave as good she got, attacking the Marxists for their lack of understanding of human nature and their desire to drive people like a military machine. Lenin lashed her with his sharp tongue, his words deeply sarcastic and his eyes glittering in a way that Ariadna found disturbing. Then, as the tram came into view, he turned and looked her straight in the eye: "Just you wait", he said with a smile as she boarded the tram. "Soon we will be hanging people like you from the lampposts." Page 103
From his hideout, Fitch (Detective Herbert Fitch of London's Special Branch who doggedly tailed Lenin in London during the 1905 and 1907 party congresses) heard the password "Liberty" given in Russian as, one by one, the delegates entered. As he crouched in agony, feeling increasingly dizzy, inside his cupboard Fitch heard "Oulyanoff" (Lenin) take the floor and demand "bloodshed on a colossal scale", without mercy, "in Russia first, and then from one side of Europe to the other". Page 115
Back in Geneva the political situation that year had changed. The Swiss police had been coming under increasing pressure from the Russian authorities to tighten up on the activities of political exiles, making it difficult for Russian emigres to obtain residents' permits. Landlords were becoming worryingly reluctant to rent to the volatile and unpredictable Russians and signs appeared in windows: "We rent only to people who have no dogs, no cats and no Russians". Lurid stories about the bank robberies and expropriations by Georgian revolutionaries in the Caucasus had filtered through to the Geneva papers; on day when a Caucasian colleague, Mikhail Tskhakaya, knocked at Lenin's door in full Georgian costume looking "the picture of a brigand", his landlady had screamed and slammed the door in his face. Page 172
