In Ukraine, when autumn comes, Lenin statues fall instead of leaves. Since January 2014, over a hundred monuments to Lenin have been demolished in the country.
In the town of Brovary near Kiev, the monument to Lenin was demolished on February 2, 2014. Right Sector activists, commonly referred to as Pravoseki, tied a rope around the neck of the monument, attached the rope to a truck and dragged the statue around the city. Next, they tried to demolish a monument to Kutuzov. He had lived in Brovary for a couple of weeks and signed several important documents there. No other prominent person has ever visited the town. The monument to Kutuzov was destroyed as well. Noteworthy, the Freedom Party declared back in 2008 that Mikhail Kutuzov's statue had to be destroyed, because he did nothing for Ukraine.
Well, if the taking of Ishmael and the defense of the Crimea from Turkish troops (it was near Crimea's Alushta, where a Mikhail Kutuzov lost his eye) means "nothing", then why Kiev is bemoaning the loss of the Crimea?
It has been Pravoseki's cherished dream to arrange the destruction of monuments in the Crimea. In Sevastopol alone, they planned to destroy 150 statues "of the occupant regime." Alas, in February 2014, only two monuments to Lenin were demolished in the Crimea. One of them - in the village of Zuya - was then restored. In Yalta, there was a whole squad of militiamen, including taxi drivers, who were guarding the statue of Lenin in the center of Yalta.
In the glorious city of Kirovograd, Maidan activists demolished monument to Sergei Kirov, after whom the city was named in 1934. It appears that now one should rename the city as well. In 2000, a citywide referendum was conducted to give the city its historical name back: since 1775, the city was called Elizavetgrad. As many as 70 percent of residents voted in favor of Kirovograd. For Pravoseki, Elizavetgrad is even more offensive than Kirovograd. Mazepagrad or Banderagrad would probably be better.
The Kiev authorities and Mr. Kolomoysky would be very willing to rename Dnipropetrovsk, which was named in 1926 in honor of Bolshevik Grigory Petrovsky. However, on 9 (20) May 1797, the city was founded personally by Russian Empress Catherine the Great, and the place was called Ekaterinoslav. Afterwards, from 1797 to 1802, the city was renamed to Novorossiysk, which is an unacceptable name too, of course, for Right Sector nationalists.
In Russia, people watch news reports about the Ukrainians pulling down Lenin statues as a tragicomedy. It is a tragic comedy indeed, when people destroy monuments thinking that they are changing history. They do not change anything - they destroy art.
In London, there is an equestrian statue of Charles I. The king is looking at Whitehall Street, at the end of which there is a monument to Oliver Cromwell, who executed Charles I.
The fleet of the French Republic consisted of battleships and cruisers with royalist and revolutionary names, such as "Henry IV", "Danton," "Charlemagne", "Mirabeau," "Richelieu", "Democracy", "Jean Bart," "La Marseillaise" and so on.
In China, there are many hundreds of monuments to Mao, Lenin and Stalin. Those monuments do not stop the number of Chinese billionaires from growing. China became second largest economic power in the world after the United States. Accordingly, Russia slipped from the second place which it took from 1945 to 1990, to the sixth or god knows what. Where is the Ukrainian economy? does it take any place at all? Could it be a law - the more monuments people destroy, the worse they live?
Alexander Shirokograd
Pravda.Ru
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