Ukraine Ban on Russian Symbols Fuels Fight Over National Identity - The New York Times - 0 views
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politics history US culture policy economic education russian ukraine national identity
shared by Alex Trudel on 27 Oct 15
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SEMYONOVKA, Ukraine
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Mr. Papchenko, the local Communist Party chief, refused to concede that anything was remotely amiss.
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Instead, Semyonovka’s 12-foot, silver-colored Lenin with his right arm extended had been propped back up on a plinth in a discreet, leafy park. “We want to preserve this small corner of Soviet history,” said Mr. Papchenko, 67, a stout former school principal whose multiple gold molars attested to his own life in the U.S.S.R.
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Vladimir Vyatrovich, 38, a historian and the head of Ukraine’s National Memory Institute, predicted somewhat rashly that if the effort succeeded in Ukraine, it would cause fateful reverberations next door.
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The laws dumped the Soviet traditions for commemorating World War II, opened up what K.G.B. secret police archives remained in Ukraine and sought to rehabilitate certain Ukrainian independence fighters whom Moscow had long pilloried as Nazi collaborators.
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A fight has emerged over the Communist symbols, however, not unlike that between supporters and opponents of the Confederate battle flag in the southern United States.
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“They behave like Bolsheviks: ‘We have to wipe out the past!’ ” said Georgiy V. Kasyanov, a historian and education reform activist. “They think the Soviet legacy can be destroyed by destroying statues of Lenin or by renaming streets, which is false. They are wrestling with ghosts.”
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By the time of the Maidan uprising in Kiev that toppled the pro-Russian government in February 2014, Ukraine was down to about 1,300 Lenins, he says. Another 500 have come crashing down since
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Some efforts proved more successful than others. One of the largest Lenin statues in Ukraine, in the city of Kharkiv, was dismembered.
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Each City Hall has until Nov. 21 to make the changes. If they do not, Parliament will do it for them by Feb. 21.
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In Kiev, a television comedy show suggested the modern, landmark Moscow Bridge be renamed the Not Moscow Bridge.
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And continue to. A woman wearing a navy blue bathrobe, hearing why foreigners were visiting recently, came bowling over, shaking her fist.