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In Reply to: Re: Responsiblility and accountability? posted by Post R on September 05, 2002 at 20:59:45:
I think you both have valid points, and it really does vary with the individual. I think we ALL come out of the group partially responsible for propagating it, and yet victims at the same time, some less, some more. That's part of the mixed baggage we all have to deal with.
Should we have spoken out more? Sometimes a few of us did, whether by words or actions. But it was like Alexander Solvenietskn said in one of his earliest books, that if only the Russian people had spoken out en masse against Stalin, they could have stopped the abusive system. He came out later and said that he now realized that no one could have stopped the system.
Like Goth said, we were in like a prison camp trying to survive with a lot of mental pressure on us to conform. That's part of the reason it takes so long to adjust to the real world after leaving--getting rid of those very pressures and levers and condemnation.
But each of us must judge ourselves individually. So much can be accounted for in that we were like cattle herded around with no voice to speak up, yet eachof us know the things we did and did not go along with, what we went along with because we had to, what we really bought into big time when we didn't need to, etc. "Every heart knows its own sorrow."
