“Together since 1957” A slogan that revises history?
(B2) The slogan found by the European Commission to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome — “Together since 1957” — challenges. Who was really together in 1957?
The Six, okay. But, in other Member States, that year sounds more like a black year. In the East, “normalization” begins. Repression rages in Hungary: 300 executions and 16 convictions follow. In Czechoslovakia, Novotny, general secretary of the CP, put an end to the experiment of “liberalization”. Gomulka hardens the Polish regime.
The following years are not more “together”! Agricultural collectivization is taken to excess in Romania. An almost impassable wall separates the two Berlins. The "iron curtain" - braided with barbed wire and watchtowers - separates, gradually but firmly, the two Europes... In the South, post-fascist regimes flourish: Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Colonels in Greece.
The slogan used to celebrate this fiftieth anniversary seems somewhat out of place. In 1957, and until 1989, several million citizens were deprived of being “together”. To reconnect citizens around a common history, can we really do so at the cost of a revision of history?
