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By DIANA BIRD
Rappahannock Newt Contributing Writer
After two weeks visiting Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi, Georgia and Tallinn, Estonia, I can’t bring home news that you haven’t already seen in the paper or on TV. I do feel like a changed person, however, and here is how I have changed.
The tour we joined took us to Georgia, and Estonia to introuduce us to the way these colonial nations, and persumably others we did not visit, view perestroika and the effect glasnost has had upon them.
I concluded that glasnost uncorked the deep feelings of distrust, resentment and hatred that the Soviet Union’s captive nations feel for the “mother country.” Some of this feeling was delineated in a film made in Georgia which we saw at a semi- , nar on the USSR last summer. The film is more than six years old, but it has been shown throughout the USSR only in recent years.
“Repentance” tells the story of ’ how the Soviet system, through one party authority governing in Georgia for many years, destroyed one family. When the local dictator dies, a survivor insists that he should not be buried; by keeping him above ground, he and his crimes can not be forgotten. He must not be allowed to rest in peace.
We are all aware that Soveit communism was imposed violently and maintained brutally wherever it was established. Estonia and Georgia were annexed to the USSR by force at different times — Georgia in the 20’s and Estonia in 1940. A point made in Estonia is that there are still people around who remember what life was like before annexation.
The communists jailed, deported and killed native leaders. They pressed the young into the military, and in the case of Georgia, took thousands away to die in World War II. We were told that a greater percentage of their conscripts perished than from any other Soviet state.
The Soviet rulers reduced the landowners and business people to poverty, imposed their inefficient, exploitative system upon the natives and dominated them through terror.
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