The EU; a history of our future

There can be very few who will deny that the EU is encroaching more and more into the lives of nations and the individual. Vladimir Bukovsky speaks as someone with an 'insider's view' of what he escaped from, and a clear idea of what we may be heading towards.

originally published 21/12/09

"I have lived in your future, and it didn’t work."

transcript of a short presentation by Vladimir Bukovsky

IT is a really puzzling to me that having just buried one monster – the Soviet Union – another remarkably similar one – the European Union – is being built.

Exactly what is the European Union? Perhaps by examining the Soviet Russian (sic) we can get the answer.

The Soviet Union was governed by fifteen unelected people who appointed each other and who were not accountable to anyone. The European Union is governed by two dozen people who appoint each other, meet in secret and are not accountable to anyone and whom we cannot sack.

A rubber-stamping gravy train

One might say that the EU has an elected Parliament. Well, the Soviet Union had a parliament of a sort too – the supreme Soviet. They just rubber-stamped the politburo decisions pretty much like the European parliament does when speaking time in the chamber is limited within each group and often amounts to one minute per speaker. In the EU there are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats with a huge salary, their staff, servants, bonuses and privileges; they have life-long immunity from prosecution which is simply shuttled from one position to another no matter what they do or fail to do. Is this not exactly like the Soviet regime?

The Soviet Union was created by coercion and there often was a military occupation. The European Union is being created, admittedly not by armed force, but by coercion and economic bullying. In order to continue to exist the Soviet Union spread itself further and further. The moment it stopped spreading it started collapsing. And I suspect the same is true of the European Union.

A new 'historic entity': nationalities and identities must go

We were told the purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity – the Soviet people and that we must forget our nationalities, our ethnic traditions and customs. The same seems to be true of the European Union. They don’t want you to be British or French. They want you all to be a new historic entity – European: to suppress all your national feelings and live as a multi-national community.

After seventy three years the same system in the Soviet Union resulted in more ethnic conflict than anywhere in the world. In the Soviet Union one of the grand purposes was the destruction of the nation state. And that’s exactly what we observe in the European Europe today. Brussels intends to absorb nation states so that they should cease to exist. Corruption was built into the Soviet system from top down, and so it is in the EU. The same endemic corruption activity that we saw in the old Soviet Union has flourished in the EU. Those who oppose or expose it are silenced or punished. Nothing changes.

In the Soviet Union we had a Gulag: I think we have a Gulag in the European Union also – an intellectual gulag known as Political Correctness. When anyone tries to speak their mind on questions of race or gender, or if their views differ from those approved, they will be ostracised. This is the beginning of the gulag: the beginning of your loss of freedom.

Old model in new clothes

In the Soviet Union we were told that we needed a federal state to avoid war. In the European Union they are telling you exactly the same thing. In short, the same ideology and the principal systems. The EU is the old Soviet model presented in Western guise. But again, like the Soviet Union the European Union has within itself the seeds of its own demise. Unfortunately when it collapses, and it will, it will leave immense destruction behind, and we will be left with huge economic and ethnic problems.

The old Soviet system was incapable of reform, so is the European Union. But there is an alternative to being ruled by those two dozen self-appointed officials in Brussels. It is called ‘Independence’. You don’t have to accept what they have planned for you. After all we have never been asked if you wanted to join.

I have lived in your future, and it didn’t work.

[A PDF copy of the above transcript is available here.]

David Frost interviewing Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky is a notable former Soviet political dissenter, author and political activist. He was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the Soviet Union.

He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the government as special prisons.

Since 1976 Bukovsky has lived in Cambridge, England, focusing on neurophysiology and writing. He received a Masters Degree in Biology and has written several books and political essays.

Vladimir Bukovsky, 21/05/2016