Czechs agonize over probing the history of totalitarianism

57 Social Democratic and Communist members of parliament have submitted a constitutional challenge to the creation of an authority for research into the totalitarian regime. Their reason: True, the 1950s in former communist Czechoslovakia were terrible years, but the 1970s and 1980s were bearable. Erik Tabery is amazed that there is no protest against this position: "Czech intellectuals have been waiting for years for a probing of the past, based on the German model: For the young to ask the older generations what they really did back in the old days. But that's not happening at all: Instead, the older ones come along and demand that the courts proclaim that these years were not so bad after all. And the younger ones go along with it; it's basically all the same to them. They'd rather take arms against the American Satan."

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