Some of us have the habit of filing just about anything that is suspected to be of subsequent interest. Those that cling to items that are devoid of any immediate usefulness, tend to experience marital problems. What is rated as junk by tidy wives has bad consequences. One is that, just by laying around, the mess takes space. The other one is that these forgotten memories gather dust. The objections of spouses can be overcome by pretending to “file” the pile “soon”. In translation that means that, the obnoxious material is reluctantly stuffed into boxes in which the mess is perpetuated. Such containers reproduce in the manner of unsupervised guinea pigs. Out of control, they are stored until the packages hiding the earlier disorder become a new obstruction.

Once the containers cannot be contained or once the banana boxes themselves become an eyesore, an ultimatum is their likely consequence. Its essence is that “either you go or the boxes go”. At that stage, guys such as the writer, counter by raising the potential damage to political culture and its literature. The gems that can bring unpolished diamonds to a shine are supposedly contained in the pile. With that the issue becomes a conflict between two worlds. One represents the here and now and a rational balance between measurable advantages and their costs. The other point of view refers to a utility to be of inestimable future benefit. That date is tied to a point in time when one will have “more time”. Mentioning that will make your partner remember only one certainty that the future will produce. Therefore, one is also rated to have no perspective beyond death. That supports the thesis that the mess has to go because the next generation will be burdened with the disposal of your undigested past. Who can resist such compelling reasoning?

Having read this far, you are probably reminded of ripening but postponed problems that, like a cancerous growth, are spreading in your attic and your garage. You will have concluded that the discourse is less a speculation than an assessment of the concerns of the graying part of the population. Well, the inference fits only the lucky ones among us. Many of us do not get grey but wear skin color as nature incrementally reduces us to become, at least outwardly, “skin heads”.

My reluctant clean up has produced two forgotten pictures from about 1990. Both shots represent a reaction to “Panzer Socialism’s” collapse in Central and Eastern Europe. Each picture tells more than what it depicts in physical terms. Even so, without a telling tale, the images are descriptive illustrations of the decisive events of the second half of the last century.

The first of the photos shared here is a lucky shot. Not because a camera was around –the writer “always” carries one- but because it is an easily overlooked detail that existed only for a very short time.

In 1990, I spent my first semester as a guest professor at a college in Hungary. I got there in the middle of a turmoil in which everything was being altered. The improvised process of transformation was universal and one could almost touch it. On a neat brass plate, the keys I got still had “Department of Marxism-Leninism” to identify them. (I still regret not having stolen that tag.) For the suspicious among you: my assignment was to lecture on American matters.  With the keys came a room. The scene on the picture depicts what I detected in the corner. For the discovery, I probably need to thank the measured approach of the janitorial services. Its style proved to have a “soft” touch and preferred to avoid unnecessary confrontation with dust and refuse.  

The overflowing wastebasket displays the signs of sudden change. There is the friendly Lenin, then a Pravda. Regrettably, the paper is not folded to its advantage. While this view shows the name of “M. S. Gorbachov”, who steered the changeover by not preventing it through dispatching tanks, a revealing something is missing. Repatedly Pravda has been the recipient of the “Order of Lenin”. The decorations, here on the wrong side of the fold, used to be displayed on top of the front page. That all of the papers exhibited their awards reflects a Soviet habit of wearing easily distributed medals. The fully covered, -from the belt to the shoulder pads and on both sides- uniforms of Soviet-era officers expressed that.

The item that needs most of the explanation is the coat of arms. Hungary’s historical coat of arms has a crown that the pope has sent to the country’s first Christian king in 1001.   In Hungary’s case, the crown expresses that the Magyars -originally migrants from Asia- became accepted members of the European state-system. Esteem for the crown is not a manifestation of royalist sentiment. Much rather, it expresses the right to rule and symbolizes the essence of the country. After 1945, to placate Moscow, the crown was removed and only the bottom of the coat of arms remained. This was identical with the republican symbol used in the “War of Freedom” in 1848-49. Embarrassingly, that struggle was decided when the militarily checkmated Emperor of Austria asked the Tsar of Russia to intervene.

Once the post-war order allowed it, in 1949 the full-fledged “satellization” of the country and her formal transformation into a “People’s Democracy,” a new and hated coat of arms accompanied the change. That one looked like the Soviet one and had a big red star plus symbols for industrial and agricultural production. In 1956, one of the initial actions of the masses that made a revolution has been a symbolic one. We tore the hated Soviet-style symbol out of the flags. That made a red-white-green tricolor with a big hole in its center into the flag of the revolution.

Once the panzer-armies of Moscow crushed the revolution, the minions imposed by the Kremlin began by hanging participants. Thereafter, they reformed the system by a tad. One of the symbolic actions of “gulyás Communism” had been a new emblem. It stuck to the the example set by “the glorious Soviet Union” –as one had to call her- but made its colors and components, except for the red star, a bit more national. That coat of arms is shown here decorating the wastebasket.

The next picture is actually a rendition of a widespread and graphically excellent poster of the “system change”.

Its message amounts to a formal declaration of intent that my bin expressed in a more informal way. The Russian text, tells “Comrades: It is all over!”  

Here this report completes its run by circling back and returning us to the present. In real life, the message of both pictures turned out to be more a hopeful intent than a determining fact of the coming decades.

Yes, in a formal sense it was all over for the comrades. However, relabeled as democratic Socialists they survived. Under a “new flag” they contested elections without being burdened by their record and they ably exploited the chances the politics of an open society extend even to the enemies of freedom. In the economic realm, the comrades proved equally astute in exploiting the new opportunities offered by a changed situation.  The Party’s control of the economy was monetized. The “state” reduced the nominal value of the economy’s components and sold these for a fraction of their value to well connected comrades. Thus, by privatizing in their last hour, they became wealthy and therefore dominant.

Several times after the “change-over”, the repainted party won elections by exploiting a politically uneducated and easily confused electorate through enticing and ruinous promises. In doing so, they “lied from morning to night” as the PM, Mr. Gyurcsány put it in a secret speech. The deceit worked. Admittedly, the impostor is in such cases as responsible for the resulting twenty “lost years” as is the electorate’s gullible majority.  

Constructing a free society and one that purses that opportunity creatively to improve its lot, can prove to be more difficult than is the overthrow of despots. In making the claim, the writer thinks of the moment’s Arab world and some possible future scenarios of post-Castro Cuba.  

In the case of Hungary –and she is not alone among the ex-satellites to have wasted time- the real change from Socialism to an order of liberty has only been completed recently. For the first time since ’89, last year’s elections have produced clear results. Essentially, a two party system has evolved and the Socialist were reduced to less than 20%. Furthermore, the newly governing “Young Democrats” have discovered that not using power represents as much its misuse as is its overuse. In the pursuit of real change, established privileges are discontinued. The bad press created by exploiting the international Left’s connections to the opinion makers which that sect dominates, is a consequence of this process. Interestingly and significantly, regardless of the sacrifices demanded of the entire population, the PM’s majority is holding at the two-thirds level. That implies a good chance to convert the promise of the photographs into a new reality.