This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 15th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Twenty years ago, communism fell in Eastern Europe, but the societies that lived under

the totalitarian system, even propping it up, never fully

condemned it morally.

Vladimir Bukovsky, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, believes that there is a profound need

for Russia to acknowledge the criminal nature

of its communist past.

We spoke yesterday.

Well, I think the biggest tragedy of that part of the world, if not the whole world, is that we never finished this job of dismantling the system there.

It was just bankrupted, but it was never dismantled, never condemned for what it was.

There was no moral judgment passed on it.

So unfortunately, it didn't finish off this illusion, this utopia. And in a few years the same illusions

recover again. You suddenly have people who would tell you that under communist, well at least people

would have bread, which was totally wrong. I remember very well that you wouldn't have bread that you would have to stand in line

for days to get bread but you know this kind of false memory it was secure why it

wasn't secure you was secure to die of hunger and yet the separation came because we never achieved one important thing

a moral condemnation of the whole regime, of the whole set of values there.

And that has some precautions in the whole world.

In the former communist countries, it really holds back the development.

We could have done much better, we could have been advanced towards democracy and market economy much better

if we finished off it conclusively. In the West it didn't give people any

...