The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a failure at the time, but it was a success in that it sowed the seeds of what we have today.
The external Soviet empire lasted 45 years. It is shattered, beyond redemption or repair.
In 1945, when the Second World War technically ends in Poland, the incoming Soviet army liberates some groups of people but begins to oppress the general population, in some ways more harshly than it had happened before.
Outside the walls, among others, is the Soviet Empire. It is malevolent, destructive and expanding. It has swallowed up over half a dozen countries since World War II.
The Soviet monster stands at our gates…the eight days’ victorious revolution have turned Hungary into a free land… Neither Khrushchev nor the whole of the Soviet army have the power to oppress this new liberty… What can you do against Hungary, you Soviet legions? It is in vain to pierce Hungarian souls with your bayonets. You can destroy and shoot and kill: our freedom will now forevermore defy you…
[Osip] Mandelstam was killed by Stalinist forces.
Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.
I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.
I looked down at the little pink face in the bundle. A newborn. The child had been alive only minutes but was already considered a criminal by the Soviets.
I think during the Cold War in America at least, there was a division; there was the Soviet government and there were the oppressed people, who were not represented by this government. That was a massive oversimplification of what the true situation was there. There were certainly many people who were completely and fully alienated from the government.
