In August 1968, myself and my wife with an infant son have managed to slip through the crack in the Iron Curtain from Bratislava to Austria. We didn't have any money, nor luggage. We have left nothing of value behind, since after some 25 years of mutual work, we have not managed to save anything, and we both lived in small flats in high-rise buildings with our parents. Kind-hearted Austria accommodated us, fed us, watered us; a kind-hearted foreign country brought us for free to its shores, where it gave us a roof over our heads, food and the opportunity to settle down.
In that new country we didn't know the local customs, nor the laws, we didn't have any family or acquaintances, and we struggled with the local language. I found a job, we gradually had four children born to us; within five years from arrival we managed to build a house, later bought the second... Today, after over 50 years, I am now enjoying a little peace and quiet and am able to look back in time. I started by reading old letters from family, friends, acquaintances and from even lesser-known people.
Among friendly letters from our families and friends in the old country, there was also a letter or two reproaching, even condemning: you don’t seem to acknowledge that you might have harmed the country you were born in: it gave you education, employment! "Don't you think you kind of betrayed your homeland? You can't be surprised that for that betrayal you've been sentenced to two years in prison!" Indeed - sentenced because I managed to give the prison the slip (because I showed a bit of dissatisfaction over the poor state of management where I worked, see my previous blogs) ...
Family letters from parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, are mostly neutral, never hostile, at times envious (in a good way): “we are glad that you managed to leave, for here the life has no future! After a moment of hope before 1968, we are diving back into the times of Novotný, Biľak, Husák, Brezhnev, etc.”.
Do I consider myself a traitor? There is only one answer to that: I have NEVER handed over my country to the Germans, as MY government has done in 1939, nor to the Hungarians, or later to the Russians, to anyone! It was handed over without my knowledge, without my consent, against my will. I didn't choose the political system of socialistic slavery; it was imposed on me under the threat of prison or even murder. I have not betrayed my own country; my country betrayed me!
When I tried to do something in my country to improve my life, work, for myself and for the state, for the world, I was constantly threatened, and my efforts were branded anti-state. Nevertheless, I managed to achieve some successes that helped to put my then field of work, and some others, from abysmally backward to quite a high level in the world. Reward? From being abused, laughed at, and denied any progress at work to the threat of jail above my head!
In the country that accepted me after 1968, no one was telling me "what kind of nonsense are you constantly inventing," "why don't you give us some rest", "you don't know it's not going to work and you can't, etc." to the direct threats "if you don't stop we’ll put you in jail"!? By the way, in those last few words is the country's legal system fully explained: not "you will be charged and brought before a court!", but "...we'll put you in jail".
In my new country, I did what I knew and what I dared to do, and when passers-by saw that it looked promising, they joined in and helped – in life, in politics, at work, in family, among neighbours, in sports, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere! No one, no institution, extended its stealing hand on the few houses that we gradually built or bought; no one reached with a stealing hand on our savings or possessions; no semi-literate "cadre" has pondered over my "class origin", nor the “class origin” origin of our children...
I'm looking at the tide wave of escapees in the world and I see people choosing a better life, just like we did all those 50 years ago. Where do they see the better life? Whether we like it or not, that avalanche has been going on for generations, relentlessly, from dictatorships to democracies, from tyranny to freedom, and in the northern hemisphere from east to west. There is no better evidence for the longevity of political systems, whatever the various self-proclaimed, infallible and adored (but inexorably murderous) “personalities” are trying to prevent as much as they can.
For those who were not alive in those days.
- Cadre was a person, embedded in managerial structures of ALL companies, large or small, who had the right to restrict professional or social progression to persons who did not correspond to the political
theories at the time. Usually, a poorly educated man of approved class
origin ;
- Class origin was a measure of competence to
progress in society. Preference was given to communist party members,
manual workers, uneducated people, etc.; prevented from progress were non-members of the
communist party and members of certain occupations (clerics, officials, clerks,
merchants, owners of properties, people with close relatives abroad, etc.).
