A seminar was held in Warsaw 14–15 May 2013 on how best to remember and honour the victims of 20th Century totalitarianism, both Communism and Nazism. Scholars estimate that Communism cost about 100 million lives, and Nazism about 20 million lives. The seminar was organised by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, PEMC, in cooperation with The Museum of the Warsaw 1944 Uprising, MPW, The Polish Institute of National Remembrance, IPN, and the Czech Institute for the study of totalitarian regimes, USTR. Professor Hannes Gissurarson participated in the seminar, the research project on “Europe of the Victims” being a joint effort of RNH and AECR, Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.

Göran Lindblad; in the background Dr. Pavel Zeman. Photo Pjotr Gaweski.

Göran Lindblad, former Swedish MP and President of PEMC, opened the seminar. He led the successful effort in the European Council in 2006 to declare 23 August a special day of remembrance for the victims of Nazism and Stalinism; on this day, in 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact making war in Europe possible and enabling the two dictators to divide between them Central and Eastern Europe. 2009, the European Parliament accepted a resolution in the same spirit. Lindblad had indeed given a talk in Iceland 31 August 2009 when an Icelandic translation of The Black Book of Communism was published.

Dr. Pawel Ukielski from MPW speaking. Hannes H. Gissurarson sits in fourth row, in the middle. Photo: Pjotr Gaweski.

Speakers at the Warsaw seminar included Dr. Neela Winkelmann, director of PEMC, Professor (Emeritus) Gundega Michele, director of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940–1989, Dr. Andreja Valic Zver, director of the Study Centre for National Reconciliation in Slovenia, and  Uve Poom, director of the Unitas Foundation in Estonia, established by Mart Laar. Dr. Winkelmann described the development of a illustrated textbook for grammar schools or senior high schools on the totalitarian experience, with collected stories about Nazism and Communism from different  countries, with an acompanying CD containing documentary films and reviews. Professor Adam Daniel Rotfeld, former Foreign Minister of Poland, closed the seminar with reflections about the Polish-Russian relationship.

Many difficult and sensitive issues were raised at the conference, such as when victims become perpetrators, and oppressed minorities turn into oppressing majorities, in the complex course of events in 20th Century Central and Eastern Europe; and what is the real and clear meaning of the words “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity”; and whether it is appropriate to reserve use of the designation the “Holocaust” only for the Nazi conscious decision and attempt to exterminate all Jews in Central and Eastern Europe or whether other atrocities should be included, such as the mass-starving by Stalin of the Ukrainian peasantry in the 1930s, or Tibet under Chinese communist rule, or Cambodia under Pol Pot. On the agenda was a visit to the Warsaw Museum of the 1944 Uprising, with a display of a film made about the city in 1945 when the Nazis, especially the SS, had almost razed the city to a ground and killed most of the immigrants, as well as the Polish freedom fighters. Meanwhile, in the crucial months of August and September 1944, the Red Army under Stalin had sat without doing anything except looking at the atrocities at the other side of Vistula, the river running through Warsaw. The film on Warsaw after the uprising can be watched on Youtube:

Also, a film on Warsaw in 1939 when it was regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and called “Little Paris” can also be seen on Youtube:

All participants were given a book put together by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance about the massacre in the Katyn woods in 1941, where Stalin sought to eliminate the Polish elite by killing it, especially officers in the Polish Army, and then blaming the mass murders on Hitler.

Ragnar Arnason discussed utilisation of natural resources.

Two members of the RNH Academic Council gave lectures at the board meeting and conference of AECR, Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, in Reykjavik 9–12 May 2013. Professor Ragnar Arnason spoke about the utilisation of natural resources, arguing that, whenever possible, it was most efficient to develop private property rights or exclusive use rights to such resources, in effect creating custodians of them. The Icelandic system of individual transferable quotas, ITQs, in the fisheries was efficient, according to Professor Arnason, because the quota-holders had an interest in minimizing the cost of their fishing effort. The general public also gained indirectly from this. Arnason criticized the CFP, Common Fisheries Policy, of the EU, European Union, for being both inefficient and unjust.

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson gave an account of the main events organised by RNH, in cooperation with AECR, in the preceding fifteen months, including two international conferences, one on the victims of communism, the other one on sustainable and profitable fisheries, and many individual lectures, given by well-known writers and academics such as Dr. Matt Ridley, the 5th Viscount Ridley, Ms. Anna Funder, Professor Bent Jensen, Professor Douglas Rasmussen and Professor Philip Booth. Professor Gissurarson mentioned some forthcoming events, such as a photo exhibition on communism in the National Library of Iceland, a seminar on Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, a party on the occasion of the publication of an Icelandic translation of We the Living by Ayn Rand, and a conference on capitalism and the use of natural resources in the memory of Professor Arni Vilhjalmsson, a leading Icelandic scholar and entrepreneur. Professor Gissurarson also showed the audience a video on RNH which is accessible on Youtube.

Daniel Hannan at dinner, enjoying the view from Harpa.

Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the Independence Party, Iceland’s conservative-reformist party, gave a talk at a special AECR dinner. Other Icelandic speakers at the conference were MPs Hanna Birna Kristjansdottir, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, and Ragnheidur Elin Arnadottir; they informed the foreign guests about the political situation in Iceland and about the position of the country in today’s world. Other speakers at the conference included Rich S. Williamson, former US Ambassador to the UN and an advisor on international affairs to Republican presidents. The chairman of AECR is MEP Jan Zahradil from the Czech Republic, and the general secretary is a long-time friend of Iceland, MEP Daniel Hannan, from the United Kingdom. A tape where he criticized Labour leader Gordon Brown has been viewed by almost three million people on Youtube.

Photo: Ivar Orn Thrainsson.

At a conference on social sciences at Bifrost University 3 May 2013, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson gave a lecture on “The International Financial Crisis and the Collapse of the Icelandic Banks”. He rejected four common explanations for the bank collapse:

1. The banks were too big. According to Professor Gissurarson, the banks were not too big; it was Iceland which was too small. The system error was that the banks’ field of operations was the whole European Economic Area, EEA, but their field of insurance or mutual guarantees was Iceland alone. Luxembourg and Switzerland had relatively big banking sectors, like Iceland before the collapse.

2. A “neo-liberal” experiment in Iceland failed. This was what Ha-Joon Chang asserted in his book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. Professor Gissurarson pointed out that the regulatory framework  in Iceland for financial markets was identical to that in other member-states of the EEA.

3. The Icelandic bankers were reckless and incompetent. Professor Gissurarson pointed out that if so, then their creditors in foreign banks were no less incompetent. Recent examples from HSBC, Danske Bank, Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, showed that foreign bankers could be pretty reckless, too.

4. The Icelandic Central Bank, under the leadership of David Oddsson, had made a series of mistakes. This was what Robert Wade asserted in New Left Review and elsewhere. Professor Gissurarson pointed out many factual errors in Wade’s articles.

Professor Gissurarson argued that the main causes of the international crisis were systemic: Banks had underestimated risk, not least because of the moral hazard created by an indirect government guarantee of their liabilities, and government intervention had made matters worse, for example subprime loans in the US and the expansionary monetary policies pursued by the US Federal Reserve System after 2002. Two causes of the Icelandic bank collapse were also systemic, Professor Gissurarson said: Iceland had become too small for the banks; and an additional systemic risk had been the cross-ownership and hidden liabilities of the banks’ largest Icelandic debtors who had formed a closely-knit group; indeed, Iceland’s market capitalism of 1991–2004 had been replaced by crony capitalism in 2004–2008.

Two other contributing factors had been the ruthlessness of the UK Labour government under Gordon Brown which had, unbelievably, used counter-terrorism laws to bring down Icelandic banks operating in the UK, and widespread resentment and envy against the Icelandic “lean and mean” newcomers in European financial markets, which meant that few if any central banks or commercial banks wanted to assist them in the rough waters of 2007–2008. Professor Gissurarson recalled that immediately after the collapse, many of the banks’ foreign assets had been sold at a fraction of their real value.

The seminar was well-attended. Iceland’s leading daily, Morgunbladid, published an interview with Professor Gissurarson 4 May under the title “Crony Capitalism Contributed to Collapse”.

Professor Gissurarson appeared on a popular television show on current affairs on Icelandic Broadcasting Service 5 May 2013 to explain his ideas:

Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Kesteven, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979–1990, will have a state funeral in London Wednesday 17 April 2013. Thatcher was protector of AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, which works jointly with RNH on two projects, “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism” and “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”.

Thatcher was strong as a lion and cunning as a fox, which is indeed how Machiavelli thought efficient political leaders had to be. Her firmness and willingness to fight for her principles evoked mixed reactions in that group of respectable, middle-aged men in grey suits and with ties, who occasionally met at the time and spoke in the name of Europe. “Mrs. Thatcher! She has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe,” French President François Mitterand once exclaimed to his Minister of European Affairs, Roland Dumas.

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson of RNH Academic Council speaks to Margaret Thatcher at a reception she gave in the House of Lords.

Thatcher herself once said to the RNH academic director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, at a dinner they were attending: “The problem with the politicians on the continent is that they have never understood the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under the law.” From the time King John Lackland had to sign the Magna Charta in 1215, there has been a strong movement in England to constrain the Sovereign’s power, a movement no less vigorous after the Public had replaced the King as Sovereign. In England, law is supposed to impose limits on both the rulers and the ruled, in the service of individual liberty.

French military leader Napoleon spoke contemptuously of the English being a nation of shopkeepers. But in the Second World War this nation of shopkeepers saved the countries on the European continent from themselves. And even if the politicians on the continent did not perhaps fully understand the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under the law, the leader of the 19th Century Icelandic Independence Movement, Jon Sigurdsson, firmly shared Thatcher’s view. “Many of the wisest men who have written on the political arrangements in England, analysing them thoroughly, regard freedom of enterprise as the main source of progress there,” Jon Sigurdsson wrote in Ny felagsrit 1844.

It was however The Red Star, magazine of the Russian Red Army, which gave the name “Iron Lady” to Thatcher. Characteristically, she relished in the name, and said in a speech in her constituency, Finchley, 31 January 1976: “The Iron Lady of the Western World? Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes — if that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.” It was then Thatcher’s fate, and destiny, to win the Cold War, in close cooperation with President Ronald Reagan of the United States.

British Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to Thatcher in a special meeting of the House of Commons 12 April 2013: