You won’t like living under dictatorship

The motto of The Washington Post is “Democracy dies in darkness.” I know from personal experience that it is darker, duller, dimmer and more colorless where democracy does not prevail.

In 1986, and again in 1987-1988, I spent time behind the Iron Curtain. Remember that term?

It was in the former Czechoslovakia while it was a [satellite state] of the Soviet Union.

This letter is to warn Americans against allowing our nation to fall under dictatorship. I can promise this: you will not like it. I’ll describe the experience as best I can.

First there was what today would be called a “border wall” between Austria and Czechoslovakia. It consisted of two barbed-wire fences like those we’ve seen surrounding the World War II German death camps: several strands of barbed wire topped either with an angled section or coils of razor wire.

The six- to ten-foot space between the fences was empty except for grass. Every hundred feet or so stood a wooden guard tower containing a uniformed soldier with a rifle and a German shepherd dog.

It was obscene and turned my stomach. We were there at the border crossing for some time while everyone’s passports were checked. In the free world, conductors checked passports between countries while the train was moving.

When the bus began to move again, into Czechoslovakia, it was as though someone had their hand on a dimmer switch and was dialing down the light level as we moved along.

Everything we passed became dingier, darker, dimmer, grayer, duller. Even the old architecture that survived the war lacked vibrancy.

We spent that first night in the closed consulate in Bratislava. As we were settling down to sleep, I began to cry. My husband asked me why I was crying.

At first I didn’t really know, so I thought about it. And it came to me. “Because the people are not free.”

Then I became angry at the situation. I felt that if I’d packed a pair of tin snips, I’d have gone back to that obscene “border wall,” and taken it down, one wire at a time, no matter how long it took, and no matter if they shot me. …

Remarkably, when we returned two years later to stay for an academic year, I was able to adjust to the situation. However, our older son, who was attending an English-speaking school in Austria, wouldn’t ride public transportation in Brno, Czechoslovakia, because, he said, “Everyone looks like you just shot their dog.” …

I had one telling experience in one of the English classes I was teaching. I had made a suggestion for a minor change of some sort, which I can’t now remember.

I was met with the response by one of my students, “It is not possible.” I was stunned into silence.

In America anything is possible. But under authoritarian rule, it is not. So things stayed the way they had been in the class.

Donald Trump has made it plain he wants to be a dictator. Trust me, you don’t want to live under one.

The Czech people left the Soviet Union in 1988 and are now a free people. I considered it my best Christmas present that year.

Carolyn L. R. Bittner

Malcom