Posted on 12/23/2021 6:28:19 AM PST by Krosan
Vladimir Putin is big on symbols. He began his rule by installing a memorial plaque to a Soviet KGB chief and reinstating the Stalin-era national anthem. More recently, he used the anniversary of the assassination of political rival Boris Nemtsov to award a medal to a Chechen official reportedly involved in organizing it. And he used the birthday of another opponent, Alexei Navalny, to sign a law banning his movement as “extremist.”
...
For all the importance of human rights work in authoritarian societies, Memorial is more than just another civil society organization — it is the keeper of the nation’s collective memory. Unlike in other post-communist countries, where atrocities committed by former regimes are being documented by government institutions — such as the Stasi Records Archive in Germany or the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland — in Russia this mammoth task was left to volunteers. Memorial’s activists have spent many years conducting research in state archives. That was hard enough in the 1990s, under a friendly government (then-President Boris Yeltsin was himself a member of Memorial). But it’s become ever more challenging under Putin.
...
Not surprisingly, Putin’s government has a different perspective. For the people who pride themselves on their past service in the KGB — the very organization that carried out this state terror — historical truth comes as a personal affront. No less irritating to the Kremlin is Memorial’s work of chronicling political repression in today’s Russia by maintaining the list of current political prisoners — which now stands at 431, twice as many as in the late Soviet period — that informs the work of international human rights institutions in this field.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So the WaPost is screaming about political prisoners in Russia when there are how many US political prisoners in the DC jail after almost a year charged with nothing yet?
Oh, and who is Ray Epps?
The author of this piece is a Soros puppet.
For bonus points, WaPo, guess which other political ideology in which major nation is trying to erase the collective memory of its citizens.
For hints look in your own editorial bureau.
The problem is that Russia’s “collective memory” is Stalinist, just as it was Ivan the Terrible-ist, Peter the Great-ist, Catherine the Great-ist, and Leninist before that.
Hopefully they don’t bury the memory of Catherine The Great.
She is gonna be a Woke heroine soon—she will probably win a Nobel Animal Sex Prize.
;-)
And the WaPo (leftists) used to kiss the ground that CCCP/Russia walked on.
Very strange recently... (anything to do with the lies thrown around about the Steele dossier(Trump/Russia)?)
This WaPo piece smells of CIA psy-ops to prep the U.S. populace for a war with Russia.
I also don’t share the author’s optimism. Putin may very well succeed in killing the real history and replacing it with the state constructed one.
A lot of beaten-down people just find “stabbed-in-the-back” myths soothing and don’t care if they are lies. Brave ones who could tell them otherwise Putin silences.
The Washington Post loves wallowing in past ‘wrongs’ - like bitter wife 40 years after a Christmas party mistletoe kiss... like black democrats who’ve made a career out of feeling sorry for themselves - like nutcases who refuse to believe that Russia - with an economy the side of Italy’s - is NOT the threat it once was.
The Washington Post loves wallowing in past ‘wrongs’ - like a bitter wife 40 years after a Christmas party mistletoe kiss... like black democrats who’ve made a career out of feeling sorry for themselves - like nutcases who refuse to believe that Russia - with an economy the side of Italy’s - is NOT the threat it once was.
The biggest threat today is China - and for some unknown reason (like China owns most white liberal ‘elites’)the Washington Post doesn’t care about China.
Conservatives appeal to voters by preparing for war while suing for peace. Leftists exploit this policy with theatre optics. Never mind that the conservative stance produces peace on our terms, leftists SCREAM that the conservative stance is war mongering, that we need to sing cumbayah and hold hands with despots who want to kill us and our allies for everything we have. Leftists are well aware that danger is the result so silently they are forced to confront our enemies militarily.
This confrontation is the result of leftist policies.
And he used the birthday of another opponent, Alexei Navalny, to sign a law banning his movement as “extremist.”
Just how many people know when is Navalny's birthday? lol..
Kara Murza is on the payroll of Khodorkovsky, not Soros. Trivia from Wikipedia:
Funeral pallbearer for John McCain In April 2018, United States Senator John McCain sent Kara-Murza a message revealing that McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer and requesting that Kara-Murza, who had worked with McCain on issues relating to Russia since 2010, serve as a pallbearer at the senator's eventual funeral. Kara-Murza later said that he was "speechless", "heartbroken", and "close to tears", and that doing so would be "the most heartbreaking honor that anyone could think of". McCain died on 25 August; Kara-Murza joined fourteen others chosen by McCain himself, including former Vice-President Joe Biden and actor Warren Beatty, as a pallbearer at McCain's funeral at the Washington National Cathedral on 1 September. McCain's choice of Kara-Murza was described by Politico as a "final dig" at Putin, of whom McCain was a vocal critic, and at U.S. President Donald Trump, for his apparent closeness to the Russian president.
Stopped reading there.
The "Stalin-era anthem" was the anthem from 1944 to 1977 and included lines in praise of Lenin and Stalin.
In 1977, Stalin's name was removed, and the rest got a rewrite, concentrating on nation and party.
After the 1990 collapse, a completely new anthem was adopted; it was an instrumental, without (official?) lyrics.
In 2000, the melody written in 1944 was reinstated, but with new lyrics in praise of Russia and naming one individual-- GOD.
Yes, Russia turned so hard that the anthem dropped two atheist Communists and elevated the Deity.
Only the first line of the chorus has survived from the 1944 anthem:
Славься, Отечество наше свободное
(roughly) "Be glorified, our free fatherland".
Its ironic when WaPo complains about statist regimes producing propaganda.
I have been privately informed that the 1944 anthem was superseded earlier, in 1953, after the Krushchev “Secret Speech” denouncing “excesses under Stalin.
I have not seen the lyrics from that supersession and must take it on faith (my informant being trustworthy) that there was a 1953 version itself superseded in 1977.
yours is an interesting analysis. Have never seen an analysis of the Russian national anthem before.
Sounds a lot like banning President Trump from Twitter and others platforms.
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