ABSTRACT
A radical discontinuity exists between the historical fact and the collective perception of the history of World War II and its aftermath, as well as, really, anything else ancient and not, in the newly independent states on the western fringes of the former Soviet Union. Namely, the Communist system succeeded in instilling false consciousness into its subjects. Only through freedom, including the medium of vigorous historical research conducted in congruence with empirical, logocentric, and deductive methodology enshrined in the tradition of a liberal learning process, can atomized individual recollections fuse into collective memories and overcome false consciousness. On the collective level, false consciousness characterizes almost everyone who lived under the Soviets, in particular anyone not old enough to have experienced the catastrophic period himself. False consciousness was implanted a sine qua non for the success of the totalitarian enterprise. Collective amnesia was greatly expedited by mass accommodation and individual collaboration.
