THIS LAND IS WHOSE LAND?
Regarding “Liquidating Libkovice” (by R. Dennis Hayes, Aug. 2):
Earlier this year, I traveled to Slovakia--to Bratislava and Presov--on a consulting assignment having to do with the privatization of state farms. My suggestion was that the parties abandon plans for the state farms, which had deteriorated after 35 years of little or no upkeep, and instead buy some land and start anew.
The state had expressed its willingness to have some of the land sold off but had no idea to whom it belonged. Some of it had been taken away from its owners by the Germans in the 1940s; other acreage had been nationalized by the communist state during the ‘50s.
In Slovakia there is a lot of unused land, and there is substantial interest in the mountains as possible winter-sports resorts, but no one knows who actually holds the rights to the land.
Many people in Eastern Europe still think of the U.S.S.R. as a Big Brother and seem to be waiting for someone to take over, someone to make a change.
ARTHUR W. ANDREWS
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE SERVICE CORPS
Santa Maria
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