During the Cold War, anti-communist historians were
unanimous on one topic: the Communists were liars. Their statistics were lies,
their trials were lies, the bones of millions in the Gulag testified to their
lies
In the period after the Cold War, the anti-communist historians
made an exception to the rule. Ex KGB men and archives recording the opinion
and testimonies of NKVD and KGB men were solid truths. Not a single
exaggeration, not a story made up for social promotion, not a taint from lives
otherwise dedicated to lying. Here, here was the truth. Here was the proof that
lefties and softies in the West were in contact with, or on the payroll of, or
otherwise spying for the Soviets.
This went along with the blackmail by archive that helped
Eastern European nationalists and conservatives sweep away the tainted
socialists and their ilk.
At the same time that the NKVD files were being studied,
pilfered, and marketed to the highest bidder, the files in the West were being….
Well, redacted and released if the FOIA requester had guessed the right
classification. Basically, we know very little about such matters as the
strategy of tension in Europe – which happened in Italy, Belgium and to an
extent in Germany – from the point of view of the Western intelligence agencies
because they don’t want any snoopers looking at who hired who to do what, and
at what price.
This gives us a dissymmetric history of twentieth century
Europe – as well as all the other continents.
Alas, the motivated gullibility of historians and the enormous
gaps in the political history of, for instance, all the countries of Europe has
persisted even now, thirty years after the end of the Cold War.
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