“Soviet” is the name of a hotel that stands on the left-hand side of Leningrad Prospect in Moscow. On the other side stands a kebab house, which had long earned the nickname “Anti-Soviet”—not because its clientele or kebabs were subversive but because of its position: directly opposite the “Soviet".
Last month the owners of the café decided to make a brand out of the Soviet-era joke and put up a sign “Anti-Soviet”. But they chose the wrong moment and inadvertently caused a political scandal which speaks volumes about Russia.
On September 7th the Moscow union of pensioners and veterans, a name that oddly unites those who fought in the war with those who served as commissars, guards in the Gulag and secret policemen, complained to the local authority about “the inappropriate political pun” and urged that the name be changed in order not to irritate those who “respect the Soviet period in our history”.
The Economist, October 15, 2009
A recent Economist article touches on a political-cultural tug-of-war rarely covered well in Western media, and The New Yorker's cover of August 3rd paints an accurate picture of it: the Soviet past is not dead; it isn't even past.
Even in Ukraine, the CIS state that may have suffered most under Stalin , foreign travelers are immediately struck by the persistence of Soviet-era landmarks. Every village with a paved road has a Lenin statue (or three) and a Great Patriotic War memorial. Main streets are still named Lenina and Sovietskaya. In Mykolaiv, a medium-sized city near the Black Sea, the avenue named in honor of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Bolshevik secret police, has thankfully been renamed 3rd street; but at it's main bus stop, at the intersection with Prospekt Lenina, the small pavilion's old sign remains prominent: DZEREZHINSKOVO. A Soviet Rip Van Winkle would not find himself at home in Ukraine--or Russia--2009, but he would certainly find enough of the familiar to be thoroughly confused. Why?
How to remember your parents' (not your grandparents'; not your ancestors'; your parents') tragedies and triumphs--tragedies and triumphs on a biblical scale, destruction and celebration that dwarf 9/11 and the 4th of July fireworks--and forget their context? A large minority of Ukrainians, in the midst of their second economic crisis since independence, will wax nostalgic--after a few glasses of vodka--about the good old days of the Brezhnev era. Given a moment to reflect and an opportunity to vote, almost none would return to the cave. Even Russia, perhaps disingenuously, celebrates Independence Day, marking the end of Soviet rule in the country.
So why Prospekt Lenina and the ubiquitous statues? Why not remove that red star atop the steeple on city hall? Faulkner would understand, even if I don't. The Soviet Union passed from the sands of time in 1991, the Confederate States of America in 1865. South Carolina removed the confederate flag from its state house in 2000; expect the last red star to come down in 2126. Robert E. Lee monuments still dot the South; wait for the last one to disappear, then wait 150 years; the final Lenin should come down. The war memorials, of both, never will.
So why Prospekt Lenina and the ubiquitous statues? Why not remove that red star atop the steeple on city hall? Faulkner would understand, even if I don't. The Soviet Union passed from the sands of time in 1991, the Confederate States of America in 1865. South Carolina removed the confederate flag from its state house in 2000; expect the last red star to come down in 2126. Robert E. Lee monuments still dot the South; wait for the last one to disappear, then wait 150 years; the final Lenin should come down. The war memorials, of both, never will.
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