“The Ministry of Interior will step forward to declassifying its archives, the main part of which is related with the activities of the former State Security”. This long – expected news recently caused a series of media discussions in connection with the ill Bulgarian problem – the secrets of the repressive machine of the communist regime – State Security. I intentionally do not use the word “former”. If we leave alone this “long process, in which it is important to clarify the mechanism and coordination for the reconsideration of the classification of the archives” (words of the Bulgarian minister of interior), as well as the contradictions with the Act for protection of classified information, according to whose regulations some archives were supposed to become public in 2003, the problem with the so called declassification is connected with something much more important – the search for truth. This is a process that makes societies democratic and progressive. Not the administration. And to what extent and whether the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior will succeed in shaking off its dark past is indicative the fact that there is a non – compliance with parliamentary regulations - something typical for State Security, which “carries out its activities under the control and supervision of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, respectively its Political Bureau and the Secretary General of the Central Committee” . A serious doubt arises in me whether this state institution which is supposed to defend the safety of the citizens does not continue to carry out its activities under the directions and control of a new GenSec, forgive me for my poor terminological vocabulary in applied communism.
But let’s leave the conspiracy theories aside. I wonder how many more generations will I have to wait to see supremacy of the law. When the words State Security are mentioned, something much deeper than Ministry of Interior, files and agents occurs to me, something, which will continue to exert influence on the Bulgarian human way of thinking and behavior for years ahead. For decades our nation was under such a sophisticated yoke that a substantial number of it started to feel pleased, satisfied, after which even free, and refused to believe that there could be anything better than socialism. Of course those who could not identify freedom with the poor Russian cars, the small apartment, the ability to “raise their children”, combined with the two–week once–a–year vacation in a cheap Black Sea resort, could also hardly reconcile with the irreconcilable oppression.
Do you know what the most effective way to subordinate a person is? Just take his freedom to choose. Decide instead of him, give him choices on a platter, relieve him from the responsibility of choice and he will not only like it, but will want more pseudo-freedom. Thus you will make him feel free – free from the right to do what he considers reasonable, to speak what he thinks, and to feel what is on his heart. A total control over personality. And to some extent voluntary. All this reminds me of a huge massive Stockholm syndrome – when the victim identifies with the ravisher and his cause, and starts to be sympathetic for him and even takes his side, denying reality.
That’s what the Party was doing for decades. I have wondered many times whether I should blame those who liked such a way of life, or those who made them like such a way of life. But is it possible to break the will for freedom so easily and to buy it with the aforementioned socialist simple gains? I think the answer is negative. What sincerely drives me insane is the continuing stubbornness of these people to reject their given right to choose relatively free, that voluntary refusal of the condition that makes them human – the process of choice and the consequential responsibility of this choice. The fear seems to be planted so deeply in their minds that it makes them incapable of surviving in an environment of personal choices. And it is not the fear from the Party, which went away in the beginning of the nineties, but the fear to bear the consequences of their own choices in life. That is what I would term “the communism syndrome” – the repressive system created incapable to live freely people, who still prefer some other party to decide instead of them, to guide their choice, while they continue to exist. Just think how many icons of salvation were created in the transition period and how all of them collapsed like the red star above the Communist House. A considerable part of the people continues to hope that the state will make their lives better because they cannot (or do not want to) hold their lives in their own hands, i.e. to make choices and be responsible for those choices in front of themselves. They act inadequately, they are confused, and they do not know what freedom is and are always ready to blame someone else for their own ineffective inertness. And how could they possibly know what freedom is, when they have never been free? To me, these people are victims, victims of the communism syndrome.
I have long reasoned why this modern slavery of mind and good sense collapsed. In fact the word “modern” is not applicable here, because all yokes in the entire human history aimed one thing – control over personality. I have searched for an economic explanation, a conspiratorial one, and I become more and more convinced that it resembles the definition of democracy – anyone could give his or her own original interpretation. Probably the end of this slavery is caused by a number of factors but I think that it fundamentally contradicted the natural human evolution. The man is a free animal and the pursuit for freedom lives along with the pursuit of control by other human beings. As Darwin once said, species continue their existence due to the survival of the fittest. This hypothesis suggests a lack of equality between the particular representatives of the species – something which the Party tried to force on the “enslaved”, excluding the dominators, who choose instead of the “equals”. Therefore only the most faithful to the Party will survive, instead of the fittest. If we accept that the only constant thing is change, which I identify with evolution, then the lack of change means a lack of evolution. The inner instinctive natural human mechanism could not survive under such conditions, which suggest extinction of the human identity and species, as a person identifies with himself, not with the Party or the local Party secretary. This makes such an oppressive system, bind together with depersonalization of the individual incompatible with the human nature. Respectively the deprivation of freedom could not be accomplished to the very end.
But what slavery managed to do was to plant in their way of thinking the idea that they are not able to choose, but depend rather on someone else’s good will. A significant number of our society, I believe, continues to live with the concept of dependence on someone else. Who is responsible for curing the syndrome of communism? I would like to leave that question open, as I do not think a synonymous answer will be satisfactory and thorough. May be the cure hides in he society itself and it will take years to take effect. The only thing I am sure of is that for now we will continue to live with this syndrome. Be careful for its manifestations.