Page 2692 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Whalan) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Events in Eastern Europe
MR STEFANIAK (5.30): After a debate on a matter that largely concerns the external affairs power, I am a little bit reluctant to speak today, but I think a point raised by Mrs Grassby in the adjournment debate on Tuesday should be addressed. Mrs Grassby quite properly raised the question of the Holocaust, but initially referred to it as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Now what I would like to do is just briefly talk about that particular incident, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and with it, as a result of other events in Eastern Europe in recent months, the dismantling of the Iron Curtain.
Mr Humphries will also be speaking on this. I want to make a couple of points. Firstly, I think this shows - and hopefully will show - the victory of Western parliamentary democracy over totalitarianism. It shows the bankruptcy of Soviet communism and socialism. Having talked about one dreadful regime in the twentieth century on Tuesday - and there were some very eloquent statements made by Mrs Grassby and her colleague Mr Berry - it also behoves us to look back on an equally abhorrent regime, that of Soviet Russia. Since 1917 it has repressed its own people. Certain classes and also certain nationalities were largely exterminated, especially under the reign of Joseph Stalin who, according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, killed at least 60 million of his own countrymen. When one adds to that other nationalities outside the Soviet Union killed by Stalin and also by other Soviet leaders, one has a very abhorrent regime that has adversely affected the world throughout most of the twentieth century. It is very pleasing to see the developments in Eastern Europe. It is very pleasing to see the reforms that finally a Soviet leader is taking. That leader, of course, is Mikhail Gorbachev.
One must look back on the horrors of the Soviet system initiated by Lenin, made into a dreadful form of repression by Stalin, and continued to varying degrees by his successors, Kruschev and Brezhnev. The people of Afghanistan have recently witnessed the terrors of Soviet imperialism in its most brutal form. That unhappy country is going to take many, many years to overcome the might of the Soviet Union that crushed its freedom back in 1978 and again, even worse, in 1979. One of the points I raised in the debate on the Holocaust on Tuesday was the fact that it would never have happened had it not been for the gutless appeasement of the Western powers. I think, despite some hiccups - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .