Smashing Lenin Won’t Save Ukraine
As Ukraine’s president fled Kiev and protesters roamed his mansion and took over the capital, old statues of Vladimir Lenin were toppled and dragged through the streets in several Ukrainian cities.
The vandalism and destruction of Lenin statues across Ukraine is only the latest attack on symbols of the old Soviet state and its Eastern European satellites.
As the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s and early 1990s, images of Lenin were defaced and graffiti artists mocked the Communist Party. In East Germany, most of the scorn was saved for the party leader and head-of-state Erich Honecker. His portraits were vandalized and altered, representing widespread anger and charges that he was a war criminal resulting from the shooting deaths at the Berlin Wall.… Seguir leyendo »