Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Just take a look back at the days you've spent under the regime and remember the moments you wanted to do things differently
and now you have the chance to realize that. - Maris Redins, 25 years, Latvia
How do you relate to authority?
I think that you can't actually feel it right now,
but you know it's there and, for example, when you feel it really close to you,
like a camera for example,
you feel like your movements are being watched, like you're restrained and unable to move.
Basically, I don't believe in it [authority]
Really, I think that as humans, we can all reach some conclusions
and they're not supposed to be the same, even if they are.
But I don't know which conclusions are the right ones.
I don't know why there should be someone ruling, why there should be something written,
because there are always other points, it really doesn't make sense to meů
I thinků wellů most of the people say that authority is inevitable,
because there is always someone who wants to really rule the world.
But actually, I don't believe it's really human, you know,
'cause we are intelligent and we can think by ourselves
and thinking we can actually take the right decisions and make the right things,
because we actually thought about it and we've not done something just because we were told to.
I actually don't believe in authority. It really kind of scares me.
I believe no one should be controlling other people's destinies
or to put an end to his life or to have any of those moral controls
that I don't believe that any other man should have over another.
After all, we are all human beings.
The way I relate to it is I try to keep my personal freedom when in society
doing good things and feeling like I contribute to society,
but at the same time allowing myself some freedom in the laws that we have to obey
to make sure we are living in a healthful society
What do you think is the most important right you've earned
after the fall of the communist regime?
I think the best thing that we've earned is the freedom of speech.
Now, we can say everything we have in our minds without being punished
I think that every human being is a person who deserves to live
and that's it, we don't earn anything.
We are people who live and we deserve to live in our own way.
The freedom of speech because this is, as they say in America, a God given right to do that
and each and every single one of us should be able to speak their mind
and I think it should be in any country in the world,
whether you live in China, in Latvia or in Romania, for example.
Freedom of speech
Do you sometimes have the sense that people take their rights for granted?
Yeah, I think that the people who were not born in the communist [period],
they don't really understand how it was to fight and to put your life in front,
not just for you, but for your kids and for the other people.
I think that the people who were born after this don't really understand
or most of time they don't empathise,
and they are like 'I don't even care, I wasn't born in that moment, I have those rights, I don't careů'
What would your grandparents answer to these previous questions?
My grandmother would say about the authority she'd say she's totally for it.
She likes authority. I think she has a kind of mentalityů
it's so sad to meů because, really, I can't talk to her anymore, because I have sort of given up.
She is 78. She is not going to change her mind, even though I try.
She would say authority is absolutely necessary
and we need something to point us our way and something to keep things organized, clear, clean.
She likes, as I think in Portugal the main mentality, people like to be guided.
I guess about the greatest right that they are given is life,
I mean, because at the time most of their rights were stripped away from them,
especially the freedom of speech.
They were not allowed to express their opinions and they had to follow the orders,
the orders given by the state. And I'm speaking about the communist state.
I don't know , I really don't know, because my grandparents lived in a different place,
a different life and they had a different system. I think that they didn't even think about this.
What would you reply to them?
I would say that they should go for revolution, they shouldn't be afraid of making some changes
if they feel those changes are better for them.
'Just take a look back at the days you've spent under the regime
and remember the moments you wanted to do things differently
and now you have the chance to realize that.
Do you think that revolution fundamentally changed your people
or are they basically the same?
Revolution? I think that revolution changed the way of living,
but not the people, because people are always the same, they are on their own,
and they have their own brains and their own way of thinking.
Revolution just changed the way the live.
Like, now, people can do whatever they want, before that they just needed to follow really strict rules.
The real revolution has to be an individual one, it has to be inside each one us,
and then it's going to happen naturally, practically, physically,
it's going to happen naturally, if we all change inside,
if we all suffer this revolution, this interior revolution.
The revolution that happened in my country, I think it changed people for five, ten years, maybe twenty years,
because people were excited, but now we're the same, basically the same.
It's sad and it actually makes me think even more strongly
that the real revolution has to be an interior thing, and not something you participate in
just because the others are doing it and you know you're influenced, we're all like that,
we are all animals, we feel instincts.
It has to be about thinking more than about instinct,
There will always be revolutionaries
and people that go against the grain of things and it'sů yesů.
What made this project happen?
The main idea of the project was to bring people together
and try to make them relate more with their own past.
In the modern society, the past is actually an issue
because youth are usually unaware of what happened before them and they also do not care,
or at least that's what they want to show us, that they don't care about what happened before them.
That's why we initiated this project and brought foreign students to Romania
so we'll find out more about their own history
and also present to them how the human rights were violated during our own history
and especially the recent history, specifically the communist regime.
We had two case studies, one on Saxon minorities and their deportation
and that's why we went for a week to Rusciori, near Sibiu,
and in the second week we came here, to Sambata de Sus, in Fagaras county
to study the conditions of the partisans and our Romanian anticommunist resistance.
We had workshops, debates and all sorts of games all related to this topic
and mainly fitting the atmosphere of the communist oppression
and we hope that we managed to make people empathize with this subject
and with all the tragedies that happened in that period.
Conclusion
Remember the dark days
so that the future will be brighter.
So that it may never happen again...