But his point was deeper: communism, as practiced, left a scar on humanity that goes beyond history books—it entered the human psyche.

And perhaps that’s where my own reflection begins. Because I live in a country that still carries that scar—in the walls, in people’s eyes, in the unspoken pauses between words. Bulgaria, like so many other former Eastern Bloc nations, has recovered on the surface—but not entirely within.

A Café in Amsterdam

Kisin shared a story about meeting a Bulgarian man in an Amsterdam café. The man told him to watch Chernobyl, saying it perfectly captured the kind of society they had lived in—one where fear and cowardice triumphed over truth.
I know exactly what he means. There’s something in that grey color palette, in the silence between lines, that hits differently if you’ve ever stood in an Eastern European kitchen with a radio whispering news no one dares comment on.

He also told Kisin about Bulgaria’s first post-Soviet president, a man who once wrote a book about fascism. The book was banned—not because it defended fascism, but because people immediately recognized their own reality in its descriptions. That says everything. In totalitarian systems, evil has no color. Whether it’s red or brown, it looks the same up close.

Two Ideologies, One Language

Kisin reminds us that fascism and communism were born in the same era. Both responded to chaos with order, both replaced individuality with the collective, both sought salvation through control.

Fascism used nationalism as its fuel; communism used equality as its promise. But both demanded the same sacrifice: the death of the individual.

Kisin argues that communism was worse precisely because it went deeper—it didn’t just control behavior, it infiltrated thought. It erased not only private property, but private life. Under communism, the state didn’t belong to the people; the people belonged to the state.

Totalitarianism in Its Purest Form

An elderly woman in Sofia once told me she remembered communism not as an era, but as a feeling.
“It was like walking in a permanent fog,” she said. “Everyone knew everything—but no one said anything.”

That’s what Kisin means when he calls communism a system that broke the human will. You couldn’t dream anymore. You couldn’t hope. Ambition was dangerous—it could be mistaken for disloyalty.

He recalled the story of Pavlik Morozov, the boy who betrayed his father to the authorities and became a national hero. When a regime can turn a child’s loyalty against his own family, it has conquered more than a nation—it has conquered the human soul.

The Silent Inheritance

Kisin insists that those raised in the West don’t understand this kind of fear. They talk about equality and solidarity—beautiful words—but they don’t know what happens when those words become mandatory.
I see it every day in Bulgaria. People who still hesitate before they speak, not because anyone is listening—but because old habits die hard.

That’s perhaps what Kisin means when he says communism is worse. Fascism killed bodies; communism killed souls.

When Truth Became Dangerous

Kisin quotes George Orwell, who during World War II wrote that the Soviet regime was “mainly an evil thing” and that he claimed the right to say so even though Britain was allied with the USSR.
It’s a powerful reminder of how easily we silence truth when it serves a convenient cause.

During the war, Stalin was needed—so the Gulag disappeared from public discourse. After the war, heroes were rewritten. Even Che Guevara, whom Kisin calls a racist, homophobic mass murderer, became an icon of rebellion.

That’s how ideologies survive—not through truth, but through aesthetics.

The Western Blind Spot

Kisin argues that many in the West still feel drawn to radical socialism out of compassion—a desire for fairness that blinds them to what happens when compassion turns into control.
When capitalism feels cruel, collectivism can seem like moral salvation. But when idealism ignores human nature, history repeats itself.
Those who once dreamed of equality ended up in labor camps; those who spoke of freedom learned what interrogation rooms smell like.

Kisin’s provocation isn’t meant to condemn empathy—but to remind us that good intentions do not erase bad systems.

The Surviving Symptoms

Walk through Sofia and you can still see the marks.
The grey concrete blocks that once symbolized equality now crumble in identical decay.
Older men still carry the look of someone who once had an opinion—and paid for it.
Even the younger generation carries a subtle mistrust, a learned cynicism.

As one Bulgarian said to Kisin,

“We were occupied by the Ottomans for 500 years—and we recovered. But we still haven’t recovered from communism.”

That line stays with me. Because it’s no longer about politics. It’s about how long fear can survive in a nation’s bloodstream.

A Warning for Our Time

Kisin’s message matters not because it looks back, but because it looks forward.
He warns that we now see similar patterns in the West—where ideology outranks truth, where political correctness replaces facts, where control begins to seep into thought itself.

When a society starts to focus more on what people should say than what is true, the slope becomes slippery.
Those who think this comparison is exaggerated have never lived in a system where a wrong word could end a career—or a life.

Lessons for the Future

Kisin’s reasoning contains a paradox. He criticizes communism for destroying individuality but admits that many who embrace its ideals do so from empathy—from the desire to make the world fairer.
That’s the danger: systems that demand loyalty before truth always end up corrupted, no matter their ideals.
When loyalty to ideology surpasses loyalty to reality, lies become the foundation of society.

The Core of Freedom

Kisin’s warning is ultimately universal. It’s not about communism versus fascism—it’s about courage versus fear.
It’s about the moment we choose silence because it’s safer.
He reminds us that totalitarianism doesn’t begin with prisons or executions—it begins with self-censorship.

Freedom isn’t just the absence of control; it’s the presence of self-belief.
And that was the first thing communism destroyed.

Conclusion – A Mirror, Not a Verdict

Kisin’s message is not a historical ranking of evils—it’s a mirror held up to humanity.
He reminds us that evil doesn’t always march in uniforms; sometimes it sits quietly in the back of our minds, whispering: stay silent, it’s safer that way.

Communism may have fallen, but its shadow remains—in the habit of fear, in the distrust of change, in the disbelief that one person can make a difference.
And maybe that’s why, in the end, I agree with Kisin.
Communism was worse—not because it killed more—but because it taught people to stop believing in themselves.
Because it created a silence that still echoes, long after the statues have crumbled.