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Tomas Venclova - The need for liquidation of communism (13/88)

234 views · Published 1 November 2017 · 1:03 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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To listen to more of Tomas Venclova’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxV_h9xes28PBo2XJysiLA3

Born in 1937, Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator. He lectured at University of California, Berkeley, where he became friends with the poets Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky. He is currently a full professor at Yale University. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2011]

TRANSCRIPT: I unequivocally took the side of the Hungarian Revolution and quite clearly understood that it wasn't possible to repair communism; one could only liquidate it. And it was the duty of every decent human being to shake the foundations of communism to the maximum. Well, one person could do that in one way, another in a different way, but it was necessary to do. Not necessarily by taking up a weapon – if someone could take up a weapon that wasn't bad either – but various other methods were also possible. Well, and my friends also took a similar position. I was still a student but somehow already from that time I didn't hide the fact that my views were at complete odds with official views, that I regarded communist ideology in a negative way or at least very sceptically, and that I held different views.

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