Glory to the Hungarian law makers - it is about time to show the real name of communism - the communist attrocities were also the great tools for the spread of russian imperialism - russian language imposed, [by the way, russian language becoming fast the dead language], the 'spread of so called 'russian culture' that include gulags, charnobyl, and tea with pollonium - all these ceased to exist. Thank you the Hungarian friends!!

Nazi scum should be reminded of Hungarian volunteers arrested as POWs on the territories of the former USSR.

Large numbers of people in Hungary also were quite strongly in support of Nazi Germany at various times pre war and during World War 2 so people are not un-biassed in relation to Russia. There is good and bad in all regimes in all countries without exception so all the criticism of USSR has to be weighed up from the perspective of the historical happenings.

aaa, Don’t rush too hastily with your hooray because your fear of gulags, Chernobyl, and tea with polonium is being replaced with the deadliest fear of all which serves Hungarian Masters as energy feeding source on uninformed population. Hungary is on a verge of bankruptcy with a debt similar to Greece’s which foreign financial plotters indebted the ignorant politicians and the whole country to the unsustainable point, not thinking that one day the international bankers will ask you their money to be returned back to them. At this point Hungary has two choices: 1. Default on the interest and get the country partitioned in few pieces or 2. Relinquish sovereignty indefinitely to the foreign bankers with its population as their slaves. Which option of the two would you choose for your country aaa? You will find gulags as A category Hotel in comparison dealing with this ruthless mob.

So the Hungarian government is telling people what to think about political movements at the point of the gun of the state, eh? The Soviet Union is gone, Russia has no state religion, but Hungary uses its government to enforce its own ideology in the name of fear of Russia, which gave it independence! My, my, my! Just what the world needs, another pathetic fascist state religion country! And it is really RICH that it was Stalin, a communist, who beat Hitler, a fascist. This is like watching Obama pontificate on the television today about Iran's "weapons of mass destruction" when they have not a single nuke, and Israel has 250 "secret" nukes. Its the kind of gross, outrageous display of raw power our elite seems to love where they love for the people to have to accept totally illogical, stupid ideas, and prattle them endlessly to be able to get a decent job! And I'm not even a communist! It is also comparable historically to the Inquisition, nothing less.

The above article states with an amazement reminiscent of someone discovering that the earth is not flat, “The idea of equating the Nazi and the Communist regimes is not new for the former Iron Curtain states.” Indeed it is not. That reality became entirely clear to each one of those unfortunate countries about the second or third day of their experience of both occupations, and has continued as a self-evident truism to them ever since.

Pauline, I agree that it is wrongheaded to make the expression of an opinion into a punishable crime. Agitation which causes conflict in society ought to be a crime, and probably is in many countries. But I believe it isn’t right to outlaw opinions for their own sake. As you are so uncompromising in your condemnation of Hungary, please tell us, did you condemn Russia in similar terms when Medvedev announced about a year ago that contradicting the official Russian version of World War II was being made a crime punishable by law? I don’t recall coming across any outrage from you on that occasion. Or is it one standard for Russia, and another for Hungary?

Russians should stop worrying about who equates communists to whom and stop making big deal out of it. Baltics, Hungary,... This is totally pointless. Even if some of them go as far as the United States which, practically, equates communists with gangsters, killers, and other criminals. I saw this in one of the official government documents. By the way, the document doesn't say anything about Nazis. I guess, they do not represent any danger for the States... May be Russians feel that this "decoration" (the word "communist") is used just to express the real feeling -- the hate toward Russians. Because that folk afraid to say this explicitly or trying to be politically correct? But, so what? What is the big news here? Everybody knows that some groups of Europeans and North Americans just hate Russian guts and everything which smells Russian. You cannot change them. Let them scream about it -- may be that would reduce their anger and internal suffering. Creating noise around this matter doesn't protect Russia. The weapons does. So, instead, Russians should just silently trying to make the superior weapon. Also, why Russia so cares about defending communists, if it denounced them some time ago? It doesn't make sense. Unless, of course, Russians feel that they are still living in the communist country... spiritually. Or having nostalgic mood about "old good times". As to communists -- they have been invented and created in the Western Europe (and later exported to Russia). So, let them deal with their own child...

aaa, Would you, please, clarify what have Russians done to you specifically? They kept you in the Russian prison for years? Or they tortured you in the KGB chambers? Or Russian tanks rolled over your relatives? Or you frustrated former member of the Hungarian Communist Party who had to follow orders of the communists from Moscow? What is it?

Say is it not funny how countries that were directly or indirectly allied to Nazi Germany are the same ones comparing communism with Nazism.I think its just a way for them to try and rewrite their shameful past.

Shame that the Hungarian lawmakers didn't do their homework - communism as a tangible system never existed anywhere! The USSR failed to achieve it, so did the others socialist countries. As dreamy as it has been, it was only an aspiration. The nature of human beings simply will never allow a money-free system with highly developed concept of 'give according to your abilities - receive according to your needs'. The long que of the 'claimants damaged by their Soviet past' is getting ever longer at the times of austerities. The High Judges in Brussels will be as busy as ever (for the taxpayers expenses) deliberating if the ideology can be sued. When the Europe at last wakes up to the fact that the whole Union was hasty and premature, I wonder.

Sam thinks it is “funny how countries that were directly or indirectly allied to Nazi Germany are the same ones comparing Communism with Nazism,” and adds, “I think it’s just a way for them to try and rewrite their shameful past.” This view is distorted. First, a military subjugation by Nazi Germany is neither a direct or indirect alliance, but total occupation. Secondly, on 25 March last year the European Parliament adopted a resolution establishing August 23 as an annual day of remembrance of all the victims of totalitarianism, drawing no distinction between Communism and Nazism. From his past posts, I have gained the impression that Sam lives in Britain. If so, then Sam’s own country, along with all the rest of Europe, has equated Communism with Nazism. Granted, the resolution was proposed by Estonia. But what country is better placed to compare Communism with Nazism than one that has been occupied by both? Sam can be eternally grateful that he has never been faced with the devilish choice of having to fight within the ranks of one evil occupier of his country to prevent his family and loved ones from being deported into slavery or murdered outright by another, even more savage occupier – if for no other reason than that he now need not be distracted from passing armchair condemnation over those who were faced with that bleak option. Those who think Communism and Nazism should not be equated either think Communists committed no gross crimes against humanity or that the victims of Communist crimes were less human than the victims of Nazi crimes, and that their anguish is therefore of no significance. Perhaps Sam could explain which of these options he embraces. Lastly, I would be most interested to learn from Sam what part of its past has Estonia ever denied, or what history it has ever sought to re-write. There are no instances of this at all, but I doubt that this would stop Sam from continuing with his accusations.

Svetlana reminds us that “Communism as a tangible system never existed anywhere.” However, a Soviet Union existed, operated and controlled by Russia as en expression of Russian imperialism, that killed, enslaved and oppressed both its own people and their neighbours pitilessly in the name of establishing a Communism utopia. As utopias, whether of the Communist variety or any other kind, never come, the best identification we can make of Communism is in the record of those who worked in its name. Their regime was brutal, their crimes were monumental, and the justification of these by others is shameless.

aaa and Marzipan6, Next time when you touch your computers, walk in the park, admire the objects of art in the museum or watch a happy African child on your TV, the chances are that you might be closer to the communism doctrine than you think. Think of those rich capitalists-philanthropists. Their ideology has something in common with the one that repulses you both - benevolence and just general love for mankind.

Sam, If only their shameful past! There is a monetary compensation on their clandestine agenda for playing victims. Germany compensated legally just about every victim of her Nazi past.

Marzipan6, If criteria for equating certain systems is defined by amount of crimes committed and amount of blood spilled, then I would, certainly, add to this list the Christianity as well. In fact, this is one of the most brutal and criminal system ever created by humans. And amount of crimes and blood on the hand of Christians far exceed of those on hand of Communists and Nazis combined. Thus, I would require that every Christian country would repent and denounce their criminal ideology and regimes... Practically, though, the criteria is different. It is determined by the laws of natural selection which this world is governed by. The Nazi regime, which is based on the ideology of national superiority, proved to be unstable and very short living. The Communism, from the other hand, which had internationalism as a primary ideology, not only still exists, but proved to be very successful (e.g. China) and still attractive (Europe more and more embracing its values). By the way, no matter how hard Americans are trying to picture the Communists as bad guys, they themselves slowly but surely moving toward such system...

Svetlana, as I have observed before, those who make sweeping accusations without providing any substantiating evidence reveal absolutely nothing about the subject at hand. They reveal something only about themselves and about their dispositions.

Svetlana, the charming images you represented as having something to do with Communism are, I am afraid, a nonsense. Communism seeks to mandate happiness by decree, not by working with reality. The reality is that human nature is, amongst other things, selfish. It has been honed and shaped by eons of evolution to struggle for the survival of oneself and of one’s offspring at the expense of all others and of all else. In the mindless world of nature where instinct and strength are the highest values, a kind of balance of terror is maintained where everything victimises and everything is victimised in a measured way that also allows niches for everyone to exist for a while, and occasionally to even enjoy some comfort. But with the additional development of human self-awareness and its associated capacity for ethics, morality and conscious choice, the law of the jungle becomes inadequate. Sustainable social development happens when people learn to work with the persistent and unavoidable impulses which nature has packed into human psychology, not quash them as that would be impossible in any case, but redirect them to producing more positive results than happens in the jungle. Amongst such fundamental human impulses are the owning of property, the development of talents by personal choice, loyalty to family, tribal and national groupings, and using one’s own resources according to one’s own judgment. Communism doesn’t allow for this, and forcibly tries to suppress it. When people naturally resist, it introduces gross brutality to try to force its agenda through anyway. In short, Communism works against nature. Rampaging capitalism is the opposite extreme, which works way too much in accordance with nature, and submerges everyone back into the heartless realm of survival of the fittest. The balance, as ever, is in the middle. Genuine socialist democracy is a somewhat more successful attempt to claim and develop that middle ground.

Bogdanov, I agree that the evil side of Christianity is nothing to be proud of. But there is no human social system that is either 100 percent good or 100 percent evil, and looking for one is a waste of time. All is a mixture, and the utility of any given system depends on the proportions of that mixture. The pursuit of Communism caused enormous suffering and loss for the very people it theoretically was claiming to benefit. Nazism ravaged everyone else for the sake of benefitting just one chosen nation. Clearly in both cases, the equation made these systems quite unacceptable. Christianity, on the other hand, has resulted in both evil and good, and has been an instrument both for retarding human development and for facilitating and encouraging human development. It has provided both widespread comfort and widespread grief. My main argument with Christianity is not with the admixture of results it produces, as in my mind, within the overall context of human experience these are not outside of the better-than-average acceptable norm. My argument is rather with the veracity of the dogma upon which that whole structure is built – but that’s another issue beyond the scope of this discussion.