He's right Paolo Mieli to criticize, in an editorial that appeared in the Corriere della Sera, the national governments of Prague and Budapest because the former is preparing to mute the fiftieth anniversary of the sacrifice of Jan Palach and the other because he wants to remove the statue of Imre Nagy who opposed the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The first was a young man, pure hero of the Prague Spring, he militated in a movement with an unmistakable name, Homeland and Freedom and became a myth for anti-communist and national-patriotic European youth. The other was a socialist in government, already close to Stalin, who when he attempted a temperate socialism in Hungary was defeated and not surprisingly found refuge in the embassy of Tito's Yugoslavia, socialist dictator not aligned with the USSR.

These are therefore two different cases, but it is negative in any case to remove the memory and respect they deserve. However, from Mieli's editorial a reader can easily fall into the misunderstanding of believing that the two governments of Milos Zeman in Prague and Viktor Orban in Budapest, defined as "national populists" and sovereignists, they are heirs of the communist regimes that existed in their countries and want to cover up their misdeeds. Indeed Mieli muddies the waters further and adds that by removing the infamous memory of the communist regimes, the two eastern governments will restore the memory of the two to their populations (short) pro-Nazi governments in their countries, the Protectorate of Bohemia and the authoritarian regime of Admiral Horty in Hungary. The reader has gotten on a carousel and no longer understands which side the national-populist governments have ended up on: they suppress the memory of the victims of communism, they want to cover up the wrongdoings of the Soviet regime and together they want to restore the memory of the pro-Nazi regimes…
There is a logical and behind-the-scenes leap that remains frankly incomprehensible. What if it was only one (clumsy) charity of country, so as not to reignite internal wounds in the two countries, anti-government exploitation or international disagreements (with Putin's Russia for example)? These are just conjectures, naturally. I understand that Mieli fell in love with his role as the retroactive Richelieu, which reworks the plots of the past and intertwines them with those of the present... But here the connection is a little too convoluted, perhaps generated by a political and ideological prejudice against the Visegrad governments.
But what seems absurd to me is that two infamous pages of communism are removed from the history of that time, to the regimes that were guilty of those crimes, to the ideology that justified those infamies, to the protagonists of that time and their servile satellites, even our own, to load them onto the shoulders of today's "national-populist" governments. Mieli's editorial is dedicated to the "memory that bothers Eastern Europe"; but we want to talk about the annoyance it has caused and still causes in Western Europe and in our country in particular, the memory of communism and not only of the East? We want to talk about the infamous silence around the figure of Jan Palach, and of the anti-communism and national independence of which he was a witness and martyr? We mean the silence placed on the complicity of our communists with respect to the Soviet regime, also with respect to the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia? The Italocommunists' thesis to justify the tanks was the same as always, rigorously Stalinist: there is a reaction lurking, there is a counterrevolution upon us, and we cannot side with the reactionaries against the comrades of the USSR. Do you remember Giorgio Napolitano and the PCI's reverse gear in both cases? We want to underline the total removal of communism and its horrors, the mute to every infamous anniversary?
After having so copiously remembered the eightieth anniversary of 1938, (racial laws etc.) gentlemen will remember to appropriately commemorate the eightieth anniversary of 1939, focusing on the unfortunate Nazi-communist pact between Stalin and Hitler, the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with which the Italian and European communists diligently aligned themselves?
To complete Mieli's editorial, at his side, there is a comment by Gianantonio Stella which takes inspiration from a document by Czech students (left-wing militants?), to deplore a concert in Verona dedicated to Jan Palach by "extreme right" musical groups. Apart from the simplifications and the summary "reductio ad hitlerum" of a rather varied archipelago of musical expressions, what's wrong with honoring a hero and martyr like Jan Palach? If they remember soldiers and writers who were fascists they cannot do so, if they remember figures who weren't even fascists, what they have to do, play silence and then commit suicide? Maybe even far-left or other musical groups would dedicate concerts to Jan Palach...
Decades pass but we are still in the militant and Manichean logic of the old marches: Hands off… But no, Boys, you are of every political faith, also touch the historical memory of those who died for the cause of freedom, of civilization and sovereign homeland, honor heroes and martyrs like him, or like the boy who challenged the tanks in Tiananmen Square…
MV, The Truth, 8 January 2019
source – http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/anche-il-comunismo-di-ieri-e-addebitato-ai-sovranisti-di-oggi/