In Central and Eastern Europe, monuments wage a silent but very real debate about the meaning of recent history.
In Prague, there are monuments to the communist liberators, and monuments to the victims of communism:
In Budapest, within sight of each other, are monuments to Soviet soldiers killed in the liberation of Budapest in 1945, and to Hungarians killed by Soviet soldiers in the uprising of 1956:
And in Bratislava, the main train station still celebrates the triumph of international socialism over the capitalists:
History hasn’t ended. (With luck, it’s just begun.)
Mark A. Edwards
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