“A Dictatorship in No Time”

The life of Vladimir Bukovsky has the makings of a bestselling political thriller. He is regarded by some as one of the heroes of the 20th century alongside other Soviet dissidents such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1971, he was the first to expose psychiatric abuse against political prisoners in the ussr. He spent 12 years of his early adulthood in and out of Soviet jails, labor camps and psychiatric institutions. Bukovsky was expelled in 1976 by Soviet authorities to the West in exchange for Chilean communist leader Luis Corvalán, and he has lived in England ever since.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bukovsky was invited back to Russia to testify as an expert witness at the 1992 trial against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

This is where the story gets even more interesting. To help Bukovsky prepare for his testimony, the Yeltsin administration gave him unprecedented access to top-secret documents of the Politburo and Central Committee—documents still classified today.

Poring over these documents, which he secretly scanned, Bukovsky not only uncovered condemning facts about the ussr, but also about the European Union. Bukovsky discovered that a handful of politicians had structured the European Union to become the totalitarian regime that the Trumpet magazine has been warning its readers about since our first edition 16 years ago.

In the past year, the 63-year-old Soviet dissident has used his findings to warn about the structure and direction of the EU as he sees it resembling the former ussr.

The Trumpet shares Bukovsky’s concerns. Indeed, as the EU absorbed Eastern European states that were once satellites of the Soviet regime, we warned that these nations had only left one dictatorship to find themselves ensnared by another.

Bukovsky made his warnings public in EUSSR: Soviet Roots of European Integration, a book he published in Europe last year, and then in a February 23 speech in Brussels, which was published in the February 27 Brussels Journal.

Prior to 1985, according to Bukovsky’s speech, the Soviets opposed European integration because they viewed the project as an obstacle to socialist goals. In 1985-86, Italian Communists and German Socialist Democrats came to visit then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev with the idea to combat capitalism and “save their political hides” by collaboration: Together, the Soviets and left-wing Europe would hijack the European project and turn it into a federal state.

To support his views, Bukovsky cited in his speech a 1989 meeting between Gorbachev and a delegation of the Trilateral Commission. During the meeting, as chronicled in Bukovsky’s book, Valery Giscard d’Estaing said to Gorbachev, “Nowadays Western Europe is experiencing a perestroika, changing its structures. It is difficult to say exactly when this will happen: 5, 10 or 20 years later. But a new modern federal state will emerge in Western Europe. That is where we are going, and the ussr should be prepared to communicate with a large single state of Western Europe.” Keep in mind, it was Giscard d’Estaing who authored the European Constitution 13 years later, in 2002-03.

The original idea, said Bukovsky in his Brussels speech, was for “convergency.” The Soviet Union would “mellow” and become more social-democratic; Europe would become more social-democratic and socialist. Then the structures would fit together—converge. “This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure,” said Bukovsky. “This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.” Bukovsky’s February 23 speech drew attention to the close parallels between organizations within the EU and those of the former ussr.

The European Parliament reminds him of the Supreme Soviet, he says, “because it was designed like it.”

The European Commission looks like the Politburo: Though its members differ in number, they are, like those in the Politburo, unelected and unaccountable to anyone.

The European Union, with its 80,000 pages of regulations, looks like Gosplan, “an organization which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance.” Even the type of corruption found within EU entities resembles that of the Soviets, “going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.”

The EU is only a milder version of the ussr, says Bukovsky. There’s no Gulag, no kgb yet—but he’s watching Europol. “That really worries me a lot because this organization will probably have powers bigger than those of the kgb. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a kgb with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes—two of which are particularly worrying: one is called racism, another is called xenophobia” (ibid.).

The Trumpet notes a key difference, however, between the two empires, which Bukovsky does not point out: The EU’s Soviet-style structure will not be run by atheistic communism, but staunch Roman Catholicism, in a resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

Note Bukovsky’s impressions, given his unique perspective. Even as some in the United States are (misguidedly) touting the expansion of democracy in several Middle Eastern nations as representing the infancy of a new era of freedom, Bukovsky is watching the quiet revolution taking place within Europe and coming to an entirely different conclusion: “It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy” (emphasis ours throughout).

Bukovsky makes this alarming statement based on his skepticism toward several trends in European politics: enabling unelected ministers to introduce new laws without telling elected parliamentarians; curtailing freedom of the press; expanding governmental emergency powers; suspending civil liberties. “This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time,” he concluded.

This perspective is very different from how most people view the emergence of this united Europe. Generally it is seen as a champion of democracy, freedom and human rights. But that is a diabolical deception!

We said in our March/April 2005 issue: “The cheers for democracy’s spread to once-tyrannized states will soon be overtaken by alarm of outright totalitarianism now taking hold on the Continent.” Examples include such initiatives as Germany cracking down on the right of assembly, and “information campaigns” across the Continent to “educate” Europeans on the benefits of the EU Constitution and further integration.

In a Brussels Journal interview after the February 23 speech, Bukovsky contested the idea that the integration European members are presently engaged in is voluntary. Denmark voted against the Maastricht Treaty and the euro. Ireland voted against the Nice Treaty. “The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting,” he said.

At the end of his speech, Bukovsky recommended the EU be stopped before it becomes a full-blown totalitarian entity. “Today it is still simple. If 1 million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. … But I do not know what the situation will be tomorrow with a fully fledged Europol staffed by former Stasi or Securitate officers. Anything may happen.”

The whole world would do well to heed Bukovsky’s warnings.

The truth is, we don’t need Bukovsky’s high-level access to see what is happening in Europe. Bible prophecy foretells of this final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. It will be a dreadful beast that will soon take peace from this Earth.

Of course, to most people, the Bible is as inaccessible to understanding as classified Soviet documents. But it need not remain that way! For a deeper understanding on this subject, request our free, full-color booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.