The Blind Spots in History # 1

2 April 2005. My family and I are returning from a holiday we spent skiing in France. We’re at nightfall, and we’ve just crossed the Belgian border. Though we still have to ride for a few hours, it feels like coming home. We can switch to a Belgian radio station again, right when the news reader starts talking.
“Today, pope John Paul II has died.”

The pope had died. That was everything the eleven year old me thought at that moment. Little did I know he was Polish, that I’d be studying Polish 7 years later on, that I’d be discovering things I never knew anything about. There are blind spots in history that should not be there. We should know the stories behind people and actions without ignoring some parts of it. We should uncover what’s been covered up somehow and spread the word.

Many people knew John Paul || as an old man who had trouble speaking. He was a pope, yes, but there’d been many more popes – what made him special? He was against abortion and gay marriage and all that – pretty predictable as he represents the catholic faith. But he was the first non-Italian pope in many, many years. Why was this ‘tradition’ broken after so many decades?

To answer that question, let’s go back in time. All of which I’ll be talking here, happened before I was born, or before I could somehow understand what was going on in the world and why. As a great deal of you are older than me, you probably already know a lot about this. But still.
Communism is our starting point. Everyone knows communism – due to this ideology (and stubbornness and stuff) the world has been divided for many years. It was the ruling ideology in Russia, but not only there. Russia was enormously powerful (though poor and hungry as well – weapons cannot be eaten…) and forced other countries as well to have a communist government. This is somewhat easily said, but it would take too long to explain that part of history. You get my point, though. Hopefully at least…

From 1944, Poland was a client state of the Soviet Union. This meant Poland got a communist government. This wasn’t considered fun. The main idea of communism is to live side by side, everyone being equal, everyone getting treated the same way. This all sounds very good. The point is, human beings are simply not able to live this way. There’ll always be leaders and followers. In reality communism was less about equality than about the government controlling the people. They used secret services of security. Communism became paranoia. There were still leaders and followers. There wasn’t really freedom after all.

People protested against that, somehow. It must have been a tricky thing to do, but still, some people didn’t shut their mouth to comply. (These people always get my respect… Can’t help it.) And with the pope supporting them (by being a pope and saying things you could interpret in two ways), in the end the people won. In March 1989, months before the Wall fell, communists and Solidarność, the famous Polish syndicate sat around the table together, and elections were organised. they weren’t entirely free, but still it gave Solidarność the opportunity to win. So Poland sort of defeated communism before any other country could in fact free itself.

‘John Paul II has been credited with being instrumental in bringing down communism in Central and Eastern Europe, by being the spiritual inspiration behind its downfall and catalyst for “a peaceful revolution” in Poland’, says Wikipedia. He gave speeches that encouraged people, he went back to Poland to show them he supported them. Or how to bring communism down without using violence. In the end, the people won. And that’s a great thing.

There are more blind spots I will tell you about. Perhaps you already know them, perhaps not – either way, there are many things people should be aware off. I’ll do my best to tell untold stories here.