Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

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

Yes I can.
 

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But if you look at it this way, Russia was also brutalized by the USSR (20 million people died) and China was brutalized by Mao-Tse-Tong (50 Million deaths). When I talk about these issues to some left-wing people, these guys may reply me by saying “Yes but Stalin was our man of steel”.
 
As I said I’m not a great fan of the Soviet Union, Especially not of Stalin. I don’t even like Lenin that much. But I want to remind people that bolshevism was a different social contract. I see it as an attempt to bring to live the vision of Karl Marx which was to create an intermediary authoritarian “proletariat dictatorship” that would lead the world to the utopia of Communism. Now today’s China does not have anything to do with such a project anymore. But the USSR did (at least partially) stand for something like that.  
 
Whenever I am brave enough to say that to anyone who has experienced that kind of communism, there is basically 2 reactions. One group will acknowledge that and will remember things like free education and healthcare, operas and other cultural activities that were designed for and attended by factory workers, miners, truck drivers etc. and all the other benefits of socialism. One very nice movie to see is the 2003 German movie featuring Daniel Brühl “Goodbye Lenin” on this transition from a socialist to a liberal Economy in East-Germany in the early 90’s. And the other group, will react like you did, telling me (for instance) about the atrocities of the Red-Army in Afghanistan or several young people dying in the hands of the secret police for listening to Western Rock-n-roll music for instance. And I know, by experience that both sides have their own argument.
 
My position though, is that the USSR was not a terror state like Franco’s Spain or Italy under Mussolini for instance (nor was China before Deng-Xiao-Ping for instance). It’s just a model that people tried to adopt, because… well we all know the results of the excesses of capitalism right? So Fidel Castro, for instance, these were mostly highly educated and very curious people who explored several economic / social possibilities and (wrongly) concluded that they could lead the world to a better social contract by using very violent and oppressive means if they had to.
 
/Hitler was different. His ideology was twisted, had nothing positive, rational or scientific in it. It was a total act of madness that inspired other fascists across the world to do terrible things mostly to their own populations.
 
Anyway, we are a lucky generation who is not caught up in these ideological struggles that really agitated young people in Europe in the 60’s and 70’s. Instead we are dealing with climate denialism and neo-fascists rulers like Putin
 
My only point here is that: Russia is not the USSR. Russia is a sovereign state with a liberal economy. It is borrowing almost all the propaganda elements of the USSR like “the imperialist West”, “Western Consumerism” or even the concept of “Nazi Germany”.
 
Reminder: Nazi Germany did attack the USSR with the aim of destroying it. Hitler’s General’s did designate Ukrainian POW’s as “untermensch” (not humans) and the Ukrainians did suffer from Nazi aggression and (like Poland and/or Yugoslavia) they were actually liberated by the Red Army. There used to be very nice documentaries on WWII Europe on Nat-Geo or the discovery Channel in the past. As a summary: Hitler was no piece of cake and honestly, I don’t know if the allies would have managed him without Stalin. I think it would have been very difficult.
 
To sum up: The sickle and hammer is no worse than the “fleur de Lys” (Symbol of French Monarchy). But, Ok, I think I got your point too. I think I would also want that symbol to go if I was in Kiev

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