Charles Maynes, The World, from PRX and WGBH: In the removal of a Soviet symbol of oppression, Russians see lessons for the US
As debates in the US rage over the removal of Confederate and other monuments that celebrate a racist past, some in Russia have been thinking hard about how people there confront their own history.
It’s an iconic moment that signaled the symbolic, if not yet actual, end of the Soviet Union.
Aug. 23, 1991. A crowd of thousands had gathered at Lubyanka Square just opposite the KGB headquarters.
Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s future first president, had just rallied the public in a successful — and terrifying — three-day revolt against a coup by Soviet hard-liners against democratic reforms then sweeping the USSR.
Amid the rush of victory, the crowd stared up at a mammoth, 16-ton monument to “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky, the founder and patron saint of the Soviet secret police.
Their one shared thought: “Tear — him — down.”
Read more ....
WNU Editor: In Russia most statues and monuments honouring former Soviet leaders were removed by elected politicians after some debate. It was recognized early that having the mob do it only increased tensions and gave the perception that the authorities had lost control of the situation.
