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 ...
Russia has a difficult past. Most of their heroes and leaders are terribly flawed. However, resurrecting Dzerzhinsky is quite different than removing Lenin. It's a sign that Russians are increasingly dissatisfied with their present society...and increasingly desperate. A small sign? Perhaps. But not to be ignored.
In life, as in English class and in the publishing world, you get marked down for spelling errors. That is especially so for errors as dramatic as misspelling one of the best known names in history.
You ought to get out more often, you're priorities are all screwed up.
Bad guess. Before writing you I did Google it, to see what would happen. It gave one the correct spelling at once.
Editors make mistakes, too, y'know, no matter how confident we are in our mental equipment. That's why it's a good policy to check first if one has the slightest doubt. I am a very good speller but I use a dictionary (or Google or other reference) all the time.
>> I do my best
Good for you. Nobody can ask more of you than that.
It has been my observation over many years that keen students of world affairs always get it right.
Misunderestimating people because of small flaws indicates a far more serious failure of judgement.
Spelling errors are to English what the wrong color lipstick and frizzy hair are to a woman. They wreck the effect.
Adolf Hitler/mentioning the (mis?)spelling Adolph
You're either a liar or a fool...probably both.
Ugh... make that my last FOUR posts. I must be in a bad mood today :o(
Aw, that's OK. I appreciate your good thoughts. Thanks so much.
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