Posted on 10/15/2002 5:11:37 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:54 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Making monuments is rarely simple, as New Yorkers debating the right memorial for Sept. 11 can attest. But for controversial trends in the commemoration business, it's hard to top modern Moscow. Making a post-Soviet break with the past has meant scrapping some of communism's many trappings, including the goose-stepping honor guard at Lenin's tomb, the plethora of Soviet place names, and, most famously, a huge bronze statue of the KGB's founding father, Felix Dzerzhinsky. But the landscape remains littered with mementos of state-sanctioned mass murder--put there as an exercise in self-exaltation by the former Soviet rulers, who ordained the murdering.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
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