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PARTISAN REVIEW
The Gulag recently became, as you rightly point out, a propagandistic
excuse and not the subject of an honest analysis. It was an exc use not
only to blame the West, but also to justify the usual moaning and groan–
ing over the fate of the always-so-innocent, injustice-suffering, and
ignored homeland.
The debate around such a grave topic has been mauled with slogans
in the day-to-day political arena. This also happened more than once
with the Holocaust. Denying, withholding, commercialization, manipu–
lation, trivialization, and boredom are without a doubt the stages of an
only all-too-"human" shortness of memory. It wouldn't surprise me if
the same fate will befall recent tragedies.
In Romania, and perhaps in other European countries, the Gulag was
often used in the last decade to silence examination of the Holocaust. In
these absurd, "I'm the top victim" Olympiads, day-to-day politics and
the xenophobic tradition go hand in hand.
EK: The Gulag is far from having received a thorough analysis.
NM: The examination of Communism (Gulag) is only seldom profound
and ample. It's usually just a journalistic and political pretext for rhetoric.
In this context, prewar slogans against the Jewish-Communist con–
spiracy have risen from the dead, even in intellectual circles considering
themselves highly democratic and pro-Western. The old cliches about
Jewish Communism are dressed up anew as post-Communist orna–
ments. A new, no less clever ploy is devised: "the Jewish monopolization
of suffering." Although there are fewer and fewer Jews, they again take
up the center stage in the soap opera. It turns out that the Jews only
declared communism to be anti-fascist in order to conceal the fact that
communism itself was a form of fascism that they themselves invented.
They brought the communist misery onto the country. Once victims,
they supposedly became pitiless executioners; and, naturally, they are
not interested in an examination of the Gulag, only of the Holocaust, in
order to secure themselves the "monopoly of suffering." Added to the
worldwide financial and cultural Jewish monopolies, this new one is
said to serve as a welcome and profitable boon.
EK: How does this charge express itself?
NM: The post-Communist Romanian press offers numerous examples.
And I don't mean only in anti-foreigner and a nti-Western pu bl ica tions
like the weekly newspaper
Romania Mara
(Greater Romania), the
