Posted on 11/10/2005 2:46:41 AM PST by liberallarry
"Iron Felix" reappeared in central Moscow this week...the Cheka founder's stern bronze visage was quietly re-erected Tuesday morning at the headquarters of...the nation's primary police agency.
...
For much of the last decade, Russia has seen the dark side of the Soviet past — the stifling political climate, the gulag camps, the lines at the food shops — fade into memory amid the failed promises of a market economy. The Cheka was disbanded in 1922...but many...talk fondly of a nation that was educated, fed, reasonably healthy and a superpower.
Today, what with stark disparities in wealth, pervasive crime, rampant alcoholism, widespread corruption and persistent terrorism, and with the nation's influence in the world a shadow of what it once was, many Russians applauded President Putin this year when he declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
For many, even the feared Dzerzhinsky recalls an era when a strong state formed a rampart for its citizens. His image's return has been greeted with dark insults along with the flowers, reflecting the same seeming contradiction that characterizes much of today's political debate here.
...
"We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood" the Bolshevik newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta said of the campaign at the time.
"Law enforcement agencies consider a man … whose name is directly linked with the introduction of arbitrary rule and a system of indiscriminate arrests … who committed mass violations of the law, to be their symbol," Yan Rachinsky of the Memorial human rights organization told Noviye Izvestia newspaper. "And this in fact speaks volumes."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
A statue to Felix Dzerzhinsky in Russia is about equal to a theme park in Cambodia dedicated to Pol Pot or a spa in Poland dedicated to Auschwitz.
Exactly. But the Russians did it. Very disturbing.
What's disturbing -- or at least suitable for the barking moonbat brigade -- is the L. A. Times rhapsodizing about a supposedly benign Soviet past that never existed, and in the process, attacking a free market economy that has yet to be tried.
What kind of "news" is it that a Russian police agency re-erected a statue "this week"? How did the reporters find out about this wholly uninteresting event?
This isn't a story at all, it's a sermon to preach communism.
If the German police erected a statue of Adolph that would be very big news. The Times is - accurately - reporting feelings common among the Russian populace and those are very disturbing.
Russians love the yoke and the lash.
His name was Adolf, not Adolph.
The analogy doesn't work. Everybody knows who Hitler was, but hardly anyone remembers Felix Dzerzhinsky. So who cares about a statue in his memory? Nobody. It's not news.
A moonbat editorial posing as news.
You mean I spelled it incorrectly.
Everybody knows who Hitler was, but hardly anyone remembers Felix Dzerzhinsky.
So in your view if the German police erected a statue of Himmler that would be quite all right...and signify nothing of importance.
This is very very disturbing. That filthy little Chekhist deserves the reputation of Mengele or Höss or Heydrich or Eichmann.
If your screenname is Twit, you're certainly living up to it now.
Why, yes, you did spell it incorrectly. I cannot account for this lapse. It has been my observation over many years that keen students of world affairs always get it right.
>> So in your view if the German police erected a statue of Himmler...
That would be your view, not mine. My view is, if the German police grew wings and flew to the Planet Mugu23, it would be equally hypothethical but much more interesting than your view.
Google "Adolph/Adolf Hitler" and ask yourself why even the finest of authors have editors.
It has been my observation that keen students of anything are able to distinguish failures of concept from failures of format.
My view is, if the German police grew wings and flew to the Planet Mugu23, it would be equally hypothethical but much more interesting than your view.
Silly. There's nothing hypothetical about what the Russians did...or far-fetched in comparing the head of the Cheka to the head of the Gestapo.
The Russians - as we all would do - lament their loss of wealth and power and the seeming failure of their current society. It's natural that they would celebrate heroes from previous, better times. But Dzerzhinsky?
C'mon, Petronski, I hear that one from the weak-minded. You can do better.
Of course I can.
But I hate to feed the trolls.
Thanks to the taxidermist's art, Dzerzhinky's far better known boss is still on display in Moscow, stuffed like a prize tarpon. Is one to be that much more distressed by the crowds that still shuffle past to see his remains?
Some people argue that it is a wax likeness, not taxidermy. But still people come to see whatever-it-is and sometimes they bring flowers. Heavens! What a story for the L. A. Times!
Enjoy your worries. I do not share them and I do not take drugs.
As it happens, I have a life...and don't care that much about spelling errors (I guess you didn't bother to google; you would have discovered that "Adolph" is a commonly occuring, alternate spelling - seemingly quite acceptable). I do my best but it's the substance which matters to me and I have only a limited time to pursue even that.
"Blurt" is a highly disrespectful way to characterize my posts...and demeans only you. After all, why would you be so careless of your time as to waste it on someone who "blurts"?...I notice your last post contains no substance whatever - only pedantry.
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