Former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus was awarded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom Tuesday evening at a reception in Georgetown.
Klaus, who spent nearly half his life under communist rule in Czechoslovakia, spoke about the perils of the Marxist ideology and warned America not to repeat them.
"Communism must not be forgotten," Klaus said. "The tragedies connected with it must not be marginalized, must not be politically correctly misinterpreted, or even excused."
As a young communist Klaus read The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek, which sparked a lifelong commitment to liberty and free market principles.
"I spent almost half a century of my life in a communist regime," he said. "It finally collapsed when I was almost 50 years old. It was long enough to make it possible for me to understand."
"Communism is regretfully an integral part of human history," Klaus said. "It didn’t appear out of nowhere. It followed similar ideologies which also considered liberty and freedom—and with them individual human beings—of secondary importance."
"Communism was, together with Nazism, just an extreme version of attitudes and political stances," he said. "The problem is that such ideologies are here with us again."
Klaus said communist ideologies have seeped into modern movements, such as environmentalism, progressivism, and moral relativism, which "denies traditional values and institutions, which formed the foundation of Western civilization," he said.
"I have a chance to witness the symptoms of these new threads probably more directly in Europe than you here in America, where roots of liberty are hopefully stronger," he said.
Klaus becomes the 55th recipient of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, which was established by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 1999. Past recipients include William F. Buckley, Jr. and Pope John Paul II.
Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Dr. Lee Edwards called Klaus an "action intellectual" and praised his leadership.
Klaus oversaw the "Velvet Divorce," which led to the dissolution of communist Czechoslovakia in 1989. Prior to becoming president in 2003, Klaus had served as Finance Minister, Prime Minister, and President on the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament.
"I think it’s fair to say that no other Czech leader in modern times has served longer and more effectively for the cause of freedom and democracy than Vaclav Klaus, who has remained faithful despite fierce opposition from the left to free market principles," Edwards said.
Klaus said the Soviet Union was seen as a liberator to Czechoslovakia following World War II, and that the country submitted to communism "with no major resistance."
However, by the 1970s communism was already losing its grip on the country.
"I remember being asked by an American friend in Prague, ‘how strong is the belief in communism and Marxism in contemporary Czechoslovakia?’" Klaus said. "My answer was, more than 35 years ago, ‘I guess there are more true believers in Marxism at the University of California in Berkeley than in my whole communist country.’"
Klaus will next travel to Hillsdale College to deliver a speech on the communist tendencies of modern movements, entitled, "Europe and America: Our Common Crisis."
"I know that there are differences," Klaus said, "but the question is whether the difference is in substance or in degrees."
"And I’m afraid that it is more and more just a matter of degrees."