A Soviet-era survivor, Tomas Halik has a perspective for today

Who would have a better perspective on world affairs today than a man who, while living under Soviet oppression, devoted his life to freedom and truth?

No one other than Tomas Halik, who wrote his recently published autobiography, “From the Underground Church to Freedom.” He lived much of his life underground in his home country of Czechoslovakia, when the Soviet Union dominated it — from his birth in 1948 until 1989, when the Czechs finally achieved freedom.

(Note: I’m writing and submitting this column before November 3, without knowing, obviously, who are the winners in the election. However, I believe what I write here applies to everyone who has been elected to any public office.)

Halik worked with his fellow countrymen to protest the crushing Soviet tyranny and then, when Czechoslovakia became an independent country in 1989, worked with the new president, Vaclav Havel, to shape a politics that was based on truth and love.

That last sentence, I’m sure, startled many readers of this column. A politics based on truth and love? “You gotta be kidding me” is what many of you are thinking.

But that, indeed, is what Vaclav Havel believed in 1989, when he was elected as president of the newly independent Czechoslovakia. And that is what Tomas Halik still maintains to this day. Politics should and can be based on truth and love.

Tomas Halik (like Vaclav Havel) has the experience which gives his perspective credibility. After all, he lived under a government that not only suppressed freedom but also used hate and lies to try to maintain its rule.

Halik has written several books since the Czechs achieved their freedom — about important issues that are still urgent today, not only in his country but throughout the world.

He devotes much of his writing to the concept of truth, and the related issue of facts. He believes in the importance of determining the facts, which the Soviet regime in Czechoslovakia did everything in their power to hide, and seeking the truth, which the Soviets did everything in their power to block.

Halik believes that determining the facts and seeking the truth are two of the most important challenges facing people today in all countries, including the United States. He does not want any country to endure the kind of government he lived under most of his life.

The Czech writer does not underestimate the difficulty of the task. Facts are hard to come by. Many people state as facts information which cannot be substantiated. Some people, sadly, present as facts material they know to be lies.

Others claim to know the whole and complete truth, which Halik believes is elusive. He asks us not to arrogantly assert the truth, but to constantly seek it.

I grew up during the cold war. I heard what the Soviet Union did not only to its own citizens but to citizens in other countries they dominated, like Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia (the homeland of all four of my grandparents).

As a lover of freedom in my country and everywhere in the world, I cheered in 1968 when Alexander Dubcek became the Czech president and called for new freedoms of speech and of the press.

Soon, however, I was angered when I saw Soviet tanks invade Czechoslovakia, crush the new government and install a new puppet regime, as they had done in Hungary in 1956.

In the late 1980s, when the Soviet empire began to crumble, I was filled with exultation and anticipation, capped by the day in November 1989 when Vaclav Havel spoke from an open window to cheering crowds, announcing that the old puppet government officials in his country had resigned.

The Czechoslovaks finally had their freedom, after a half-century of being treated ruthlessly first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets.

Tomas Halik helped bring this about. He had organized, for example, the beginning of a decade of spiritual renewal in the mid-1980s by helping lead a series of pilgrimages to churches named after Czechoslovak saints like Wenceslaus, Procopius and Agnes of Bohemia.

These events, attended by thousands of pilgrims, showed the Soviets that the Czechs were determined to have their religious freedom, while also asserting their national pride. The authorities tried to stop these pilgrim-protests but couldn’t. There was too much determination by the Czechs to achieve liberty and justice for all.

Halik paid a price for his beliefs. He had to live much of his life underground, telling no one, not even his mother, that he had been ordained a priest in Germany in 1978. He risked imprisonment as an underground priest and had to constantly look over his shoulder for the secret police.

When Halik, therefore, makes statements from the strength of his convictions and experience about how politics should proceed, he should be listened to.

After the Czechoslovaks achieved their independence, their leaders, led by Havel and assisted by Halik, stressed the importance of hope and reconciliation. They also tried to be as transparent and honest as possible.

They believed in the importance of identifying reliable facts to help them determine where their country should go next. And they believed in the importance of larger truths— that freedom is essential and that lies and hate, which they experienced under the Soviets, must give way to truth and love.

I believe we in the United States can benefit from listening to Halik. Hate and lies can eventually give way to truth and love, but only, he writes, if people strive hard enough for freedom, justice and unity. Love, he says, is what can and should bind people together. I agree.

John Spevak wrote this for the Los Banos Enterprise. His email is john.spevak@gmail.com.