Thursday, January 8, 2009

Historical/Political conversation with a student

She's a Bio-Chemistry Professor at Charles University - for those not in the know, that's probably the world's oldest most highly regarded scientific department in existence.... if not in forever.... Tesla went there. So did Einstein... and a whole lot more people whose names you'd recognize but that's not my point here...

The point is she's smart. I enjoyed our talk earlier this week for two reasons - three - she's interesting and shared a lot her views with me, the conversation was quite revealing in a very introspective sense, and it got me out of having to teach class as she was the only student that day.

Here's what I'd forgotten and sort of knew:

The Czech Republic had left Germanic (Hapsburg) rule shortly before WWII and had an elected and free government of their own creation for a short while before they were invaded by the Nazis. They were so quickly overrun that the country experienced very little bombing and such - the reason why the entire center of Prague is a UNESCO sight... you won't find the cross section of architecture here anywhere else...

So - after WWII they were Communist - the assumption, quite often, as I've heard it from others is that - one Russia got there first, and/or two, they welcomed communism...

Well, actually neither are right.

The liberation from Nazism and the terror and death and destruction, however Stalin's communism wasn't much of a difference... Communism wasn't the government of choice - a free government, like they'd had prior to the Nazis is what they wanted.... but we kinda screwed that up for them.

Prior to arriving, or contemporaneous to the first liberating troops arrived in Prague there was that big ol' Summit thingy that all those famous PMs and Presidential people went to... lots of pictures and all that - and when the press wasn't around Europe was carved up and passed around - would you prefer light meat or dark? Czech or Austria?

Well, it was agreed that Russia could take a good section of central/eastern europe... pretty much the land from Germany over...

And while these conversations were taking place (without political representation from or consideration of the individual nation's desires) the first tanks started rolling in to Prague - the liberators had arrived... the Nazis were being driven out... and the school children, my student one of them, drew pictures of the flags of their saviours and rushed in to the streets to greet the soldiers....

Calling out, "America, America" over and over again as their earnest hearts had craved and prayed for this day... when their families could be reunited, aunt, uncles, mothers, fathers, siblings returned from re-education, freedom of the fear to venture outside, the freedom to speak freely, to pray out loud as they chose, to acknowledge their truths, to live peacefully.

And our American troops rolled up to the edges of the city and stopped... We held back a few days, sort of sitting and protecting, but most of all waiting. We waited for the Russians to show up for we had agreed to hand the country to Russia and so Russia had to be the 'true' liberators.

And we know how that liberation turned out.

Another "Mission Accomplished" moment.

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