Many Young Slovacs Clueless About Communism’s Iron Grip

They confuse Stalin with Hitler, echo their parents’ nostalgia for a supposed “golden age” and think that the worst part of the communist era was not being able to travel freely.

Fifteen years after communism collapsed throughout Eastern Europe, some people worry about the generation born since then growing up largely ignorant of the hardships, repression, and lack of basic rights and freedoms when the Marxists ran things.

The lack of knowledge may be especially acute in Slovakia, which took a five-year detour from the path to democracy after splitting off from the Czech Republic in 1993. Critics here blame parents, the education system and the absence of a spirited public debate about the recent past for the skewed picture that many young people seem to have about it.

Young Slovaks like Marian Timm, 14, acknowledge that they don’t know much about the system that held the former Czechoslovakia in an iron grip until Vaclav Havel -- the playwright who would become president -- galvanized the masses into a Velvet Revolution that ended decades of repressive rule in 1989.

Asked what he knows about communism, Marian first debates with a teenage buddy whether it was Adolf Hitler or someone else who was behind the regime.

Eventually, they agree that it wasn’t Hitler, but their mental picture is still murky. Marian says his parents describe their earlier lives as a time ruled by “golden communists” who offered “lots of jobs and discipline.”

“People dressed in a funny way then, but things were cheaper,” he said. “We keep hearing that [bread] rolls were cheap, but also that it was not good, as people could not travel just anywhere.”

Even older teens, born before the regime fell, appear clueless about communism.

“I don’t understand what it was about,” said Linda Recna, 19, a university student. “My mind is full of chaos when it comes to this because it’s something that we haven’t lived through.”

Older people lament the lack of knowledge. They lived planned, predetermined lives in those days. And while the system did offer jobs and apartments for all, it also had no room for individualism, personal growth or religious beliefs, they say.

Some critics believe that Slovakia’s ability to address the past was retarded by its side trip into authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar. His regime was marked by cronyism and little commitment to democracy, isolating the young country from the West.

Meciar’s loss of power in 1998 has been followed by rapid political and economic reforms that have brought Slovakia back into the democratic mainstream. Last spring, it joined NATO and the European Union.

But the sheer variety and speed of changes over the last 15 years -- the sudden availability of freedom of choice, free elections, free travel, consumer goods -- have left many youngsters with a warped view of the preceding era.

They hear little about it at school, and many parents aren’t eager to discuss the communist years in detail.

Although history textbooks in schools spell out the communist era accurately and clearly, teachers say they have little time to cover the material.

“It’s dealt with very briefly ... we never go too deeply into these themes,” said Anna Gregorova, a history teacher at a primary school in Levice in southern Slovakia.

Ida Andrascikova, who teaches at a high school in the central town of Revuca, says her students -- who live in an area saddled with high unemployment -- tend to look at things from the perspective of their parents, some of whom are nostalgic for the old days.

“When I teach them about communism, some nod in agreement, but some just smirk,” she said.

Martin M. Simecka, editor in chief of the national newspaper Sme and son of an intellectual who was imprisoned as a dissident under communism, thinks that the worry about youths is not overblown but he believes that it’s too early for people to clearly see and understand the past.

“I think that in 10 years, this generation of 15- to 20-year-olds will start to ask their parents: ‘How could you have lived in something like that?’ ” Simecka said.

Emil Dohnanec, who was jailed by the communists and served five years in the uranium mines in the 1950s for allegedly conspiring against the regime, also counts himself among the optimists, but is still troubled by young people’s lack of knowledge.

The nostalgic feeling that communism was not so bad “is absolutely a primitive opinion,” said Dohnanec, 80.

“We have hope that the situation will improve,” he said. “I’m an optimist, even though I would never have believed that communism would leave such a mark on the nation’s soul. I’m happy that my children and grandchildren will be better off.”