Lenin Returns to Ukraine

A statue of Vladimir Lenin again stands in front of the municipal building in the Ukrainian town of Henichesk, in Kherson oblast, right over the border from Crimea. Based on available photos the Russian flag and some kind of Soviet flag were already flying above the municipal building. During the Maidan Revolution in early 2014 that led to the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, activists pulled down Lenin statues all across Ukraine. The original Lenin statue in Henichesk was not brought down during this time. It was removed by city officials in 2015 after Ukraine passed a decommunization law banning Soviet symbols. 

Henichesk Mayor Alexander Tulupov told a reporter at the time that 90 percent of the population of the town “reacted normally to the demolition of the monument,” but that some residents were indignant. He also emphasized: “We did not allow this monument to be thrown away, we left it for history. Today we have it in safekeeping in one of the utility companies.”

Now a Lenin statue has reappeared, but it is not the same one as the one taken down in 2015. They didn’t just take the old one out of a warehouse and pop it back into place; somebody expended some effort and found a different one (maybe the old one was too big or could not be located).

This might strike some as a bit strange, as Vladimir Putin has stated that Lenin’s revolution betrayed the interests of the Russian nation. In 2016 he directly condemned Lenin as an oppressor who had killed priests and the czar and for having placed a “time bomb” under the Russian state by allowing internal “ethnic” regions in the Soviet Empire. In his pre-war speech on February 21, Putin specifically invoked Lenin as the ultimate villain behind Ukraine’s existence:

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Comments (24)
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  • Where are the rabble-rousing youth of the city when we need some good old fashioned vandalism?

    Maybe they’re just biding their time.

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  • Thanks for the article.
    I only comment a few times a year but this is why I pay a subscription.
    I read as wide as I have time for but I’m not gonna find this perspective anywhere else.

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  • Some parallels here between old Soviet monuments and Confederate war monuments. Supporters like to say they're celebrating their heritage; opponents point out that there's a lot in that heritage that probably shouldn't be celebrated.

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    1. I don’t see any parallels. It seems quite clear that the people did not put up that statue and likely do not support it.

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    2. Another notable and even closer parallel is that of the confederate monuments that were put up in the early 20th century when the regime that would become Jim Crow was being assembled across the South.

      Unlike prior memorials to the then-recent war dead which could at least be understood as a contemporaneous thing, many monuments lionizing historical figures from the Confederacy were put up long after the fact as an expression of power by one faction of society against another - not dissimilar to putting up a fresh statue of Lenin as a statement about today.

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  • I lost the respect and friendship of yet another man, just last night, when I come to find out he believes the election was stolen, and Trump,”won by a lot”. It seems the paranormal politics has, is and always will be Pat of the human condition. All I can do is have hope, faith and believe there is a very special place in hell, right now, for the man in the statue. Like the good ole U.S. of A., Russia and Ukraine most certainly have their deplorables, who worship at the altar of “strongmen”, not a loving, just and vengeful God. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower

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    1. I have lost a lot of respect for a lot of people in the aftermath of such things. I am trying to find the right balance where otherwise valuable relationships are not discarded altogether before it is truly necessary to do so, but it is difficult - and vexing when one sometimes feels that the other parties are not nearly so constrained or fastidious about putting the relationship before the belief. Hang in there.

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      1. Agree with everything “probably wrong” said in the post.
        I have precisely the same problem as OMG.
        OMG we have to try hard to keep the Love, and not use the deplorable option.
        That is a relationship killer And makes the connection to the strongman even tighter.

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      2. Thanks for the advice. I would only have to add, speaking of statues, the racists confederates of the old south, the todays wannabe Leninist, racists Stalinist’s, of the same as the old school totalitarian communist Russia, and my dearly beloved Trumper of yesterday , I mean last night, know they are right. To wit, no wonder he didn’t want to talk to me, he thinks I am crazy for not agreeing with him. 🤞be with you Probably Wrong. Good self effacing moniker.

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  • It does seem rather hastily assembled.

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  • If I was Putin's advisor, here is my plan for Russia to take over the Donbas.
    https://infraredline.substack.com/p/warzone-ukraine-putins-plan-part
    Thankfully for Ukraine, Russia does not appear to be pursuing my strategy.

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  • Putin arguably doesn’t like communism but he did like the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Unions size is the only thing Putin covets. He wants a larger military he can control.

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    1. When Bolshevik communism pivoted to “Socialism in One Country” in the mid/late 1920’s, the communist international was forever replaced by “Soviet Russia”. Putin wants what Stalin and the worst of the Czars had. He and Russia deserve none of it.

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    2. I'm finally finishing Volume III of The Gulag Archipelago, so it's kind of funny to read a(n albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek) take of "Putin loves the USSR minus the ideology." Solzhenitsyn spends most of that volume savagely making fun of the people that claim the repression was some sort of unfortunate sideshow to the political ideology; in fact, just as Orwell allegorically showed it in 1984 and Animal Farm, the repression *WAS* the ultimate goal for the people in charge, the ideology was just a fig leaf for maintaining power. The entire state security apparatus regularly made a mockery of the ideology of Marx. In that way, Putin has a whole hell of a lot in common with Lenin and Stalin even if Putin doesn't speak revolutionary ideology as a native language.

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      1. He’s a neo-Soviet, just as Stalin was a Tsar with the title of “Comrade General Secretary”. Same old tyranny, new coat of paint. Putin even decided to recycle the old national anthem and keep up most of the old Soviet shibboleths. The more things change…

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      2. Ya!......Just an old fashion power mad crank. What they have in common is the brute force they are comfortable wielding to stay in power. Whatever’s philosopher Lenin may have believed about communism, “each according to their needs”, he innately took as what the Party needs, and of course the Party and Lenin were one at that time. Putin eliminated the need to have a Party....He got to choose who would be the beneficiaries. The oligarchs......I myself was hoping someday to be a Mogul. What do you think? Is a mogul better than an oligarch? I think so LOL. Mogul don’t have to answer to anyone.

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  • Thank you for an interesting perspective.

    Brings to mind Steve Bannon’s famous quote declaring himself a “Leninist”. Is this what he’s looking for, I wonder, just so long as he’s one of the guys in the situation room, pointing out which hospital to target with a missile strike?

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    1. When he is not trying to open schools of fascism in Italy, he is also wanting to embrace totalitarianism and use chaos to get us there. He said he wanted to bring down the entire establishment, including the Republican and Democratic one.

      Thanks right wingers, for loving Breitbart so much, that you gave us Bannon who probably gave us Q.

      When people tell you who they are, listen to them.

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  • Perhaps the Putin statues are not ready yet, so Lenin is just a place-holder while the new ones are being finished. Imagine the Lenin statue without a shirt or beard, and expressionless, and it is about 75% there.

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