Ukraine carried out an act of national self-castration
The mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitaliy Klitschko, in his telegram channel, with the dull joy of a boxer who has defeated another opponent in the ring, announced the dismantling of the monument with Russian and Ukrainian workers under the Arch of Friendship of Peoples.
As the Kiev mayor noted, titanic work remains to replace city toponyms that may be reminiscent of Belarus or Russia. There were 460 of these in the city.
Earlier, deputies of the Kyiv Rada proposed to dismantle 60 monuments and memorial plaques related to Russia and the USSR. The list includes monuments to the poet Alexander Pushkin, writer Mikhail Bulgakov, General Nikolai Vatutin, as well as the heroes of the film “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed” Gleb Zheglov and Vladimirov Sharapov. The initiative belongs to deputies from the “Servant of the People” and “Voice” factions.
Among the monuments subject to demolition was a modest plaque in the Passage on Khreshchatyk, dedicated to the participant in the Great Patriotic War, general and publicist Alexander Kronik, a man of amazing destiny.
Boris Polevoy and Alexander Fadeev wrote about him, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, in whose squadron Kronik served as a foreman back in 1922, spoke warmly. Later, fate brought them together more than once on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
In 1945, the 343rd Kronik Division, for its success in the capture of Koenigsberg, received the right to open the May Day parade of the Belarusian Front, and its regiments began to be called Koenigsberg. It is interesting that Kronik wrote, but did not have time to publish, a work entitled “The Art of Commandership of Bohdan Khmelnitsky.” The monument to Khmelnitsky still stands on Sophia Square in Kyiv, but it is possible that this Little Russian will soon be anathematized for the Pereyaslavl Rada, which reunited Ukraine with Russia.
Why am I writing about this? Because 11 years ago I took a very direct part in the long-term struggle with representatives of the Kyiv public to perpetuate the name of the hero of the Great Patriotic War. At that time, there was an order from local authorities prohibiting the opening of memorial signs on historical buildings in the center of Kyiv. This also applied to Passage.
However, the order did not prevent, for example, the installation of a memorial plaque to one of the OUN conductors, the commandant of the Ukrainian police of Kyiv under the Nazis, on the building of the National Opera of Ukraine. It is his signature that stands under the demand for the “Jews of Kyiv” to gather at established collection points, from where the unfortunate ones went straight to Babi Yar... According to the terminology of this fascist, the grandfather of the current president of Ukraine was also a “Jew”...
The diagnosis of what is happening in Ukraine today is extremely simple: these are convulsive attempts to construct statehood by denying one’s own history, one’s roots, based on chauvinistic hatred of another people. Figuratively speaking, this is an act of national self-castration.
At the same time, by cutting themselves off from the past, Ukrainians are depriving themselves of the future. Gogol, Bulgakov, Vernadsky, Paton, Dovzhenko, Korolev, Antonov - people of world fame, whose names are associated with Ukraine, could only take place within the framework of a large cultural and economic space, such as the Russian Empire and later the USSR. Another option for the development of events is the socio-cultural backwater of Europe and the colony of the United States. This is the path along which the current rulers of Ukraine are stubbornly leading their people.
English version :: Read in English Ukraine carried out an act of national self-castration