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Ukraine tore down its Lenin statues. The hard part is filling the spaces left behind.
Washington Post ^ | Nov 16, 2018 | Anton Troianovski

Posted on 11/19/2018 2:57:21 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege

Four angels and the Virgin Mary mark the spot where the Communist used to stand.

“We used to get drunk next to the Lenin,” a 45-year-old mechanic named Volodymyr said as he passed by.

“Now it’s a sin to drink there, I guess,” his friend Yulia said.

Five years after the start of Ukraine’s pro-Western revolution, the once-ubiquitous figure of Vladimir Lenin has been eradicated by law. So have other symbols of the Soviet era — gone from the country’s squares, streets and buildings.

But Ukrainians are still searching for meaning — and identity — in the spaces left behind.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance...says all known Lenin statues on Ukrainian government-controlled territory have now been dismantled — more than 1,300 since the decommunization laws were passed in 2015. One exception: monuments near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

What remains, he acknowledges, are hundreds of empty spaces and pedestals, often in towns’ central squares. In the institute’s internal jargon, the vacancies are known as “stumps.”

“The fact is, the question of how to fill these spaces will remain the subject of discussion among Ukrainians for some time,” Viatrovych said. “Our views of our history are still being formed.”

Ukraine’s search for new symbols to replace its Lenins reflects the country’s larger struggle to reorient itself toward the West amid economic turbulence and the continuing war with Russian-backed separatists in the east.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: communism; idols; lenin; putinsbuttboys; russia; statues; ukraine
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1 posted on 11/19/2018 2:57:21 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Easy.

Statues of Reagan and Trump


2 posted on 11/19/2018 3:01:59 PM PST by 2banana (Were you)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

WashPoo mourns the removal of monuments to Uncle Joe Stalin?


3 posted on 11/19/2018 3:02:08 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Denounce DUAC - The Democrats Un-American Activists Committtee)
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To: 2banana

Chik-Fil-A franchises.


4 posted on 11/19/2018 3:05:06 PM PST by rightwingcrazy
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

How about a memorial to the millions purged under Communism?


5 posted on 11/19/2018 3:05:17 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Denounce DUAC - The Democrats Un-American Activists Committtee)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Start a worldwide sculpture contest. The entries would probably be astounding and tourists would flock to Ukraine for a “new sculptures” tour.

Do I have to think of everything?


6 posted on 11/19/2018 3:10:51 PM PST by Persevero (Democrats haven't been this nutty since we freed their slaves.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Statues of Ivan Mazepa and Stepan Bandera?


7 posted on 11/19/2018 3:15:44 PM PST by Zhang Fei (They can have my pitbull when they pry his cold dead jaws off my ass.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

You can just hear the sadness in the writer’s heart that his communist hero is gone. The emptiness, the abandonment, the despair ... If only Vladimir could have lived forever ...


8 posted on 11/19/2018 3:17:14 PM PST by IronJack
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Perhaps a big concrete potato or vodka bottle?


9 posted on 11/19/2018 3:18:53 PM PST by SpaceBar
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

There’s always Pavlo Shandruk


10 posted on 11/19/2018 3:33:54 PM PST by PAR35
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To: rightwingcrazy

“Chik-Fil-A franchises.”

Never go hungry again.

Was talkin to a guy recently from Ukraine.
His grandparents went through the Bolshevik revolution (so did my grandfather.)

He immigrated here about 20 some years ago with his wife and kids. About 10 years ago he started researching Ukrainian history and was shocked. His parents and grandparents never talked about it.

(They couldn’t in the USSR Over the here in the US my Grandfather taught me that “For the People.” was nothing but.)

He said “All of a sudden I realized why my grandfather stockpile bags of sugar and flour underneath his bed.”


11 posted on 11/19/2018 3:44:48 PM PST by lizma2
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Yes, it has been pointed out, that the new Russia never faced its path and rejected communism. Watching a Dutch movie the other day about the secret banks that financed the resistance, and started to wonder why we have no movies on the Cambodian genocide, or the Georgian genocide in Russia. Part of me thought maybe we just know so much more about the Nazi occupied countries, and know very little about what went on in the Soviet Union?


12 posted on 11/19/2018 3:46:49 PM PST by Sam Gamgee
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To: rightwingcrazy

Now that I think about it a Dunkin Donuts!


13 posted on 11/19/2018 3:47:08 PM PST by lizma2
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To: 2banana
Or statues of Prince Vladimir of Kiev...the first ruler of Kiev to become a Christian.

Probably not a statue to Batu the Mongol...although he did less damage to the people of Ukraine than Lenin or Stalin did.

14 posted on 11/19/2018 4:03:39 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

In Odessa a Lenin staute was turned into Darth Vader.

15 posted on 11/19/2018 4:03:45 PM PST by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Ukraine and Eastern Europe are throwing off the insanity of communism... while the Democrats her embrace it and their Nazi cousins.

Go figure.


16 posted on 11/19/2018 4:18:17 PM PST by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: NFHale

Ping.


17 posted on 11/19/2018 4:18:39 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: DuncanWaring

Howdy Brother Dawg!!! Woof!
Posted at #16 on this.

My ancestral people are throwing down the commies - too bad they aren’t subjecting the commies to the same ... fun and games ... that the communists subjected people who disagreed with them did.

You know... “to be fair” and “equal”.

Just sayin’.


18 posted on 11/19/2018 4:28:19 PM PST by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: 2banana

I like the Reagan and Trump statue idea.

Imagine how the commie pri*cks would react.

And the ones left over there, too.


19 posted on 11/19/2018 4:30:09 PM PST by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: NFHale

Lenin’s useful idiots are alive and well.... and growing.


20 posted on 11/19/2018 4:33:43 PM PST by lizma2
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