Russia and Ukraine

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But the statue isn’t being destroyed. The hammer and sickle on the shield is being removed.

You seem upset that the emblem of a country which no longer exists is being replaced by the emblem of a country that has been illegally invaded by the successor of the country who did the invading. You might do well to inform yourself about how Ukraine fared under the Soviet Empire.

Simply because the Soviets helped defeat the Nazis isn’t a justification for keeping Soviet symbols on display in Ukraine. Because, you know, recent events.

Boru

You may be right.
 

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The thing is: I don’t hate the USSR that much. You know, for instance path-finder, the first robot on the surface of Mars, was a result of US and Soviet engineering. Its predecessor was a remotely guided robot that was designed to operate on the Moon (pure Soviet design). The ISS is a result of US-Russia collaboration after the collapse of the Soviet-Union. I’m not saying it was heaven on earth. But Kiev was an important city within that country. So Was Azerbaijan, and Georgia and/or Kazakhstan for instance. There was a different social contract. A social contract that was partly based on Marxist ideology. So I see it as a political venture that didn’t work (for many reasons). DO you know that the game Tetris (a brick falling game that was the predecessor of modern video games) is of Russian design? American contractors had to find the designer of that game in Moscow in the late 80’s to get the royalties and commercialize the game in the rest of the world.
 
Finally, in the 2010’s I went several times to listen to the Red Army Choir. I was very moved when the chief of that orchestra (also a relic of the past) said “War is terrible thing, I hope that no one in uniforms other than us ever comes to this beautiful country”.
 
So I’m not a nostalgic. But Heyç Yuri Gagarin was from the Soviet Union. So that’s all I’m saying.

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It's not about Pathinder. It's not about the ISS or social contracts or Tetris or the Red Army Choir or Yuri Gagarin. It's about whether you can grasp the notion that a country which was brutalized by the USSR might prefer to display its own symbols over Soviet-era ones.

Can you?

Boru