Lenin Statues Toppled Across the Ukraine

[big_dog]

Source: The Washington Post

Protesters used ropes and crowbars to bring down statues of Lenin which are seen as a symbol of Moscow's rule across the former USSR. (AP)

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/world/europe/lenin-statues-toppled-across-ukraine/2014/02/22/4154d881-20a9-49e8-8281-de27efbe44ac_video.html

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[DURHAM D]

1. Your link needs fixin'. nt

[Bok_Tukalo]

2. When toppling statues, save the pedestal.

It will came in handy later.

[big_dog]

3. goodbye lenin

[joshcryer]

25. Great movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/

[big_dog]

48. more pics

[another_liberal]

17. Who do you think the ultra conservative "Right Sector" radicals will replace him with?

Considering the tenets of their ideology, it would have to be either Jesus or some fascist.

[PatrynXX]

34. not particularly excited seeing historic statues come down

only if they are historic , if they are built in the last 20 years bit different , never thought of Lenin as the bad guy. Stalin yes Lenin no. But yes save the pedestal. Maybe commemorate some of the dead killed by pussy snipers. Image in my mind thats bound to stick is the group trying to go forward with metal / wooden guards against such sniper fire. Absurd but brave. Like the movie 300 which is somewhat fictional but see the arrows come and not all the shields protect them. some of them get nailed with arrows. woulda love to see some people fly arrows from the other side. only sort of weapon one can forge to throw far and possibly get something hurt. true I'm a knive / sword Highlander fan. But Arrows. those are different. Flaming Arrows even more interesting.

[Itchinjim]

4. Good.

He was a murderous bastard.

[DeSwiss]

19. Although no angel.....

...I believe you're referring to Stalin rather than Lenin as the one who was the murderous bastard of the USSR. He killed more than Hitler.

[DireStrike]

20. While we're being technically correct,

are you counting famine deaths? Stalin killed plenty of people, some of whom I admire greatly, but distribution issues in a state of (quasi)civil war are a bit different than death camps.

[DeSwiss]

21. That's what I said.

Stalin is the worst of the two lots. Stalin is estimated to have killed 23 million, which includes the famine deaths that occurred under his dictatorship:

[joshcryer]

24. Using that metric Lenin is responsible for 4-8 million dead.

And of course the ethnic cleansing of the Cossaks.

[2naSalit]

30. What?

No Idi Amin?

[iandhr]

37. He killed under a million

just missed the cut

[2naSalit]

43. Almost sorry I asked

I never knew the actual number. Interesting graph though, and a very sad statement about our species.

[WatermelonRat]

47. A slight nitpick

But Leopold II wasn't really a dictator, at least not in the same sense as the others. Within Belgium, his power was limited. His genociding was done as a private citizen managing his personal territory, though I suppose you could say that he was in effect the absolute dictator of the Congo.

[PatrynXX]

35. Lenin was no saint that is true but in terms of bad guys

Stalin was like Vader taking out the Emperor. The only way to kill the greater evil is finding someone just as bad but slightly weaker. Without Stalin we would be nazi everywhere. Some of this might be in play in Ukraine. But you don't see Stalin statues much of anywhere. Although someone can point out if I'm wrong. Nowadays it's just Lenin statues. Stalin Statues when away during the movie Goldeneye and the cold war. Stalin wasn't preserved. Lenin was. Have massive book on Lenin. I see him more of a Che vs Castro figure.

[Cha]

5. Times they are a changin.

[freshwest]

6. What took 'em so long? The USSR wasn't popular in Ukraine since Stalin. n/t

[joshcryer]

8. Yeah, it surprised me to learn they still had them.

[Loaded Liberal Dem]

10. Same here

[awoke_in_2003]

11. Same here. nt

[jberryhill]

28. They had a five year plan

[iamthebandfanman]

7. once again DU rallies

to celebrate the left being mocked by a bunch of right wing neo Nazis and their citizenry patsies (not that their current government isn't corrupt, it completely it.. but some ones not paying attention to the leaders of these protests)....

how is it again that destroying a statue of lenin has anything to do with their current situation? ive heard people attempt to blame lenin for things stalin did as justification on DU already.. so please keep in mind that lenin died in 1924 when giving your answer...

those statues of lenin don't represent Russia anymore than marx does. Russia has been a quasi fascist authoritarian state since stalin took control long ago.. now they are moving to corporate fascism like the Chinese.

all this show is, are right wingers going 'hey lets tear this down thatll show 'em!' and without thinking protesters saying 'fuck yeah stupid russians!'

[joshcryer]

9. WTF? Stalin followed Lenin to the tee.

Modern leftists tend to claim they follow Trotsky. Though there are some who revise history and pretend Stalin didn't follow Lenin.

[iamthebandfanman]

12. only chronologically

did they share ideology ? of course.. but they most certainly did not have the same views on everything..

this diagram demonstrates just a few of those things :
?cb=1188562583

just a FEW.
next youll be telling me he followed all of the ideology of marx completely... Marx hoped to elevate the status of workers, Stalin repressed workers because he believed it was necessary for the good of the state.

he did proclaim Stalinism to be a mixture of Leninism and Marxism...
but I could go outside and call myself a pink and purple elephant right now repeatedly.. wouldn't make it a reality tho.

since you bring up trotsky.. he was pretty avid about stalinism not being socialism and certainly not anything marx would approve of.... I certainly don't think lenin would have exiled trotsky, do you ?

(btw, don't think im trying to say lenin was a perfect leader or person.. he certainly wasn't either... but he never wronged the Ukrainian people as far as I can tell)

[joshcryer]

22. 5 million dead in 1921 in the Povolzhye famine.

Caused by Lenin's War Communism, Prodrazvyorstka (confiscation of all grains and goods from the people), and especially, Decossackization (ethnic cleansing of Cossacks), which Lenin and Stalin used to ethnically cleanse an entire peoples. How Dekulakization (cleansing of "Kulaks&quot and the Great Purge (further repression) were not a mere extension of Lenin's policies, I dunno.

People use the New Economic Policy as some kind of change in Lenin's thinking. Well, too little, too late, Stalin followed the man who was, not the man who wanted to be. For Stalin to suddenly reject practically everything that Lenin had created to go to this new idea of going back to capitalism would've been completely unthinkable. Especially because Trotsky agreed more with Stalin about not returning to a "state capitalist" concept.

Would Lenin have exiled Trotsky? Who knows. They were all the same even Trotsky, who had a kinder, more gentle concept toward the end, started with the same authoritarian background as the rest, completely interpreting Marx in the worst way imaginable (though it was consistent), particularly calling out autonomous workers committees a fetish:

At the Congress Trotsky rounded on the Workers' Opposition:

"They have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!"

Trotsky spoke of the "revolutionary historical birthright of the Party":

"The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship...regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class...The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy..."

The Communist Manifesto places the Vanguard Party as the true harbinger of communism, and, well, Stalin tried, I say. I think Stalin followed Lenin's writings very closely, and certainly pre-Stalin history resembles post-Stalin history very well. All Stalin did was do it at a much bigger level.

[jberryhill]

29. You want my advice?

Why argue with a guy who keeps a Venn diagram of Lenin and Stalin handy?

I mean,,,, c'mon.

[Codeine]

40. Oh, snapski!

[tatum37]

38. Where do you get these numbers from?

Please cite a reliable source.

[another_liberal]

13. Actually, Lenin warned against Stalin replacing him in his will.

He warned of Stalin's obvious paranoia and megalomania. Stalin, however, had become Party Secretary, and when Lenin died he replaced the real will with an altered one which praised him and anointed him as the new head of government. The two men were quite different. Lenin was ruthless, but truly was serving what he saw as the inevitable World revolution against capital and exploitation of workers. Stalin was only for the increase of his own power and glory. His bloody madness knew no bounds.

[joshcryer]

23. Sure, the New Economic Policy indicated Lenin was having a change.

But that change came too little too late. Stalins policies after Lenin's death were very similar in magnitude of oppression and extermination as while Lenin was still alive and leading.

[another_liberal]

26. I would love to see a link to the source . . .

Which offers evidence that Lenin's actions "were very similar in magnitude of oppression and extermination" to those practiced by the singular monster who was Stalin.

[joshcryer]

27. Lenin had, what, 6 years?

The first 2-3 years of which were ran under War Communism which probably shouldn't count but I count it because I think the paranoia "western propaganda" bullshit led to the deaths of great Soviets (the Kronstadt rebellion), which itself led to the New Economic Policy, and Lenin died 3 years after that.

So where do we get evidence? Well, see my other post in this thread that outlines the various tragedies that happened under Lenin. Even not counting War Communism, the rest are still tragic bullshit oppression and Stalin could be argued to have extended that oppression.

[MrModerate]

14. Except that those statues *do* represent Russia in the popular imagination.

And that's what these demonstrations grow out of. Humans respond to symbols in very intense ways. Denying this will just leave you confused all the time.

[2naSalit]

31. What comes to mind

Last edited Sun Feb 23, 2014, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

for me in an immediate sense is the way statues of Saddam Hussein were torn down with the help of US soldiers...

Some say that our "folks" are "helping" some of the more violent protesters... I wonder if that is true.

[Codeine]

41. I imagine the Ukrainians are capable of undertaking a popular uprising

without it being instigated by US operatives.

[7962]

33. So we're supposed to equate ourselves with Lenin? If Lenin is considered "OK" then DU has problems

Without Lenin, there would've been no Stalin. The Ukranians are perfectly within reason to tear down anything that is a monument to what oppressed them.

[Igel]

44. Yes, they do.

Lenin insisted on keeping the Russian empire. He may have argued against imperialism, but for his imperialism you needed an emperor. The USSR had to have the same borders as the Russian empire, just like the Chinese Communist party has this "if ever part of the Chinese empire, it's part of *our* China."

There was a Ukrainian independence movement under the tsars. And part of the Civil War there was as much anti-Russian as it was anti-Communist. Yet Lenin insisted that Ukraine be part of the USSR.

No Lenin, and Ukraine would have been independent in 1920. No Holodomor. No Stalin purges. The strengthening of the pro-Russian contingent would have been much reduced. No Stalinization of the formerly non-Soviet parts of Ukraine. No suspicion of that part because they had been non-Soviet; because they had sided with Hitler against Stalin. Because they were Uniate instead of Orthodox.

The spectre of Lenin hovered over the Maidan.


There's also contemporary politics. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev are still a big deal in the Donbas. The Donbas was the darling of all kinds of "revolutionary" fervor--they were proletarian when the other parts of Ukraine were agrarian, and the CPSU was firmly proletarian in its power base. Khrushchev was a product of the Donbas. Stalin was still respected at the Donbas. The Donbas looks back to Soviet times with affection, when its industrial output was respected and useful, when the heavy-industry bias of central planning was in place, when the USSR was Russian and controlled out of Moscow.

Any hero of your political enemies is likely to be resented. Especially when that hero is a symbol of imperialism and colonialism. (Rather different to hear Lenin described as a proponent of imperialism and colonialism, isn't it?)

[WatermelonRat]

46. Contrary to what rightwing pundits would have you believe

Most liberals do not have any sympathies towards communism or Lenin. We do not see the destruction of idols to a dictator who killed hundreds of thousands as "the left being mocked".

[jakeXT]

15. The New York Times had one 3 months ago

[ButterflyBlood]

16. Surprised they're still up. No statues of Hitler or Nazi flags in Germany after all.

Good job. Smash every last one of them.

[onehandle]

18. What year is this? nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

32. Looks like 25 years ago

[Grins]

36. I thought they were all gone years ago.

Was it just Stalin?

[former9thward]

39. When I was in St. Petersburg I saw Lenin statutes.

In 2000 and 2005. Not in the 'main' squares but in off-the-beaten-path working class neighborhoods. Stalin has never left either. His burial spot is right next to Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.

[fedsron2us]

42. Lenin has been dead for 90 years and the USSR has been pushing up daisies for over 2 decades

If you want to find the source of many of the Ukraine's more recent problems you could do worse than start with the fall out from the banking crisis in 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Ukrainian_financial_crisis

Unfortunately, that might mean examining some of the things that happened in the past decade a bit closer to home than Kiev, particularly as it is clear that the west did precious little to help the Ukraine financially in 2009 when its economy imploded. In fact the country was more or less pushed into Putin's arms. Still no chance of any of that being discussed in the western MSM which has a penchant for rewriting history that Comrade Stalin would have admired. Much better to print photos of people pulling down statues of a man who died nearly a century ago and claiming incorrectly that it has historic significance when in reality it is a historical footnote to recent events.

[RebelOne]

45. It's not "the Ukraine"; it is Ukraine, no "the". n/t