Reflections on Eastern European History

I was a leftist until I went to Europe.

I studied in West Germany and East Germany.

Being a leftist meant I was a Marxist.

Meaning I loved Marx, meaning I loved Stalin.

I went to East Berlin and saw that

people were whispering to each other.

People who loved to laugh, who were into politics, who were into art.

Then I went to Czechoslovakia and saw

that when the Czech people, during the Prague Spring,

rose up for freedom,

Soviet Union tanks arrived and massacred the people of Czechoslovakia.

In Hungary, I saw that later, the Hungarian people

rose up for freedom from Soviet Russian captivity,

thousands upon thousands of Hungarians were massacred

in Budapest and other Hungarian cities, and

now, you see in Afghanistan that when the Afghan people say

freedom, the Soviet Union allows itself to

kill the people of Afghanistan with tanks,

no one has anything to do with Russia,

and they say that this is the demand of the Afghan socialist government.

I did not want, nor do I want, a socialist government for Iran.