"Dzerzhinsky Returns" Topic

A row of men in suits stands at attention, a dark bronze statue towering between them and a grey high-rise looming behind. A solemn speech praises a state official as a "model of crystalline integrity, self-sacrifice and devotion to duty." Devoid of color and spontaneity, the scene could hardly appear more Soviet. Yet it played out last week, at the unveiling of a monument to Bolshevik secret police chief Felix Dzerzhinsky at the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in Moscow…

Moscow Times: link

That delivers a message.

+1 Putin's Russia is the successor state to Stalin Soviet Union. Same lies, just now completely ideologically free.

I understand the eyes follow you around…

Probably one of the most spectacular "fail to learn from history" I've seen in quite a while. Iron Felix was not all that good at foreign intelligence but he was a world class monster at oppressing his own people.

McKinstry, it's good to have skills that are in demand.

Bunkermeister

Dzerzhinsky is the founder of the Russian (Soviet) security service in its modern form. And a monument to him was erected as the founder of the service.

Dzerzhinsky was the father of the Red Terror and a monster. Unless the statue represents him burning in Gehenna, this is a sad development.

You will first deal with your monuments to the Confederate slave owners. Have they all been destroyed already? I also recommend destroying the monuments to Columbus – did he start the genocide of the Indians?
Let us decide for ourselves who and what monuments will stand in our country. There are a huge number of controversial personalities in history. But this is our story, and we need to accept it with all its advantages and disadvantages.
The monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected on territory owned by the department, and it itself decides what to install and where. It's his right.
In Russia, on the territory of a private museum, there is a monument to Ataman Krasnov, also an extremely controversial personality: a white officer, writer and Nazi collaborator. And despite widespread public discontent, the court did not find legal grounds for the demolition of this monument. Alas.

regnum.ru/news/3200224

The monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected on territory owned by the department, and it itself decides what to install and where. It's his right.

Too bad there is no democracy in Russia to restrain idiocy.

Is democracy a dictatorship of democrats? )))

Dzerzhinsky was a dedicated and single-minded proponent/defender of the communist revolution. Anything and anyone who he perceived as contrary to that goal was ruthlessly exterminated after obtaining any possible information by whatever means required. As is often the case, the means eventually became the end rather than the justification. That part of the past is something the current government wishes to honor.

The "what about" others argument is often used to justify an act that could be considered, um, controversial.

No one is denying the right of the SVR to do what they want. Just commenting on erecting a monument to such an evil man is a commentary on the mindset of those who erected the monument. And supposedly in a democracy.

Dzerzhinsky was not originally a communist – he was a left Socialist Revolutionary. And he headed the Cheka precisely when he was a member of this party. He was even arrested in connection with the rebellion of the Left Social Revolutionaries in Moscow…
In general, during that period there were no innocent parties – mass terror was carried out by all parties to the conflict. It's hard to stay clean in the middle of a bloody deathmatch.

Cuprum2, thank you, I stand corrected. However, choosing one of these mass terrorists to honor is still the choice of the current government.

The Left SRs initially supported the Bolsheviks and made common cause with them during the brief meeting of the Constituent Assembly. If memory serves, they broke with the Bolsheviks over continuation of the war/Brest Litovsk. Those that did not fall in line were ruthlessly exterminated. I was not aware Dzerzhinsky was a Left SR.

I am far more concerned with the pictures of Mao that I see in a fair percentage of Chinese restaurants in the U.S.

"You will first deal with your monuments to the Confederate slave owners. Have they all been destroyed already?"

The slave owners held people in bondage. This was done in a majority of the world at the time. Felix Dzerzhinsky was responsible for up to 200,000 deaths. Not the same thing.

"I also recommend destroying the monuments to Columbus – did he start the genocide of the Indians?"

No, he didn't. Read some history instead of propaganda.

Dn Jackson, yes, these people were slave owners. But did they violate the then existing laws and regulations? This was the way of life of people at that time, the way of their thinking. From the current point of view, this is of course disgusting, but you cannot apply the moral standards of one society to the existing norms of another, less developed one… It's just history. And she is who she is. It can no longer be altered or corrected.
I just fall into a stupor when I see black actors playing European roles in films, for example, from the Middle Ages… Why is this? Will, say, a film character look adequate – the leader of an African tribe of the 19th century, opposing white colonialists, played by a Chinese (without the appropriate makeup, of course)? The world is falling into some absurdity…
The same absurdity as the demolition of monuments to outstanding people of the past, regardless of our modern assessments of their actions.
However, the Bolsheviks in Russia did the same thing. But at least they can be understood – they built a utopia precisely on the denial of the previous experience of humanity. And even they came to their senses pretty quickly.

The phrase about Columbus was sarcasm. Although… After all, it was he who paved the way to the new continent for the white colonialists, who practically destroyed a very original civilization ;-)

They're putting up a statue to a man who murdered up to 200,000 people and instituted a police state that kept millions suppressed. No one ever thought things like that were acceptable or the norm. Especially in the 20th century.

"They're putting up a statue to a man who murdered up to 200,000" And destroying memorials to Poles and Lithuanians murdered by the Russians, apparently a memorial plaque for the Katyn massacre has also been removed,

Tally Ho!