Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Communists are right outside our window now, playing Vstavay, strana ogromnaya and Den Pobedy loudly since around 8 am.

No way for them to get to Maidan: the cops have been preparing for today since yesterday.

No more than a hundred of them, but a really loud bunch. And every other one seems to hold a flag, Mishah reports, so it may appear as if there are more of them than just a hundred. The guy who is making a speech now says there are eight people among them from Crimea - not sure if he thinks that's a lot or not...

Not a single Ukrainian flag, but at least one Russian and about a dozen strange-looking flags - the Imperial Russian yellow-white-black on red.

Mishah thinks most of the people there are Vitrenko's (she's speaking at the moment) and about a third might be from Russia (hence, those strange flags). So, technically, they aren't Communists, but, likely, the so-called Progressive Socialists and the so-called Russian Eurasianists. Not that it really matters, of course.

Some guy is bitching about a recently-dedicated Stepan Bandera monument in Lviv - and this reminds me of an item (RUS) I saw on Gazeta.ru yesterday: a bunch of the opposition and near-opposition groups were protesting in Moscow against restoration of a monument to "the White generals who fought on Hitler's side" during WWII; they called it hypocritical of the Russian authorities to get involved in their neighbors' affairs and yet ignore what's taking place at home.

11 comments:

  1. "Communists"? Don't you mean "fascists"? :-)

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  2. megan, you may think it's a joke, but I don't take these things lightly.

    The commies were the most vicious sort of murderous thugs imaginable. Their after-effects and legacy are still being felt throughout the former sovok republics and satellites.

    Even if some of the political parties don't still call themselves commies.

    I had 2 uncles who were "guests" in sovok labor camps. There were other effects on my family. Mine is not the only family affected.

    I have a friend who lived through the Holodomor. His village disappeared a long time ago, but his father managed to save most of the people in the village through some amazing cleverness.

    The Jews get to whine and moan and scream like pigs at every opportunity about what was done to them - and rightly so.

    But for some reasons, nothing ever seems to happen to Ukrainians. Millions can be wiped out, imprisoned, tortured, families can be broken up or destroyed, but Ukraine doesn't exist, or for the likes of you, it's just a joke.

    Nasty, disgusting people like Vitrenko show up even today. She doesn't have much of a following, thank God. She has a right to speak. But she is a dying breed.

    Any observations I had with regard to commies were not reflecting on Neeka.

    It's just that all that mindless, insane commie gibberish is still being felt today in Ukraine, and a lot of useless effort is being wasted on people trying to resurrect the failure and fantasy of the sovok empire.

    I also thank God that there are people like Neeka who have a head on their shoulders and a brain in her head, and some good commons sense.

    Bottom line, and not to beat around the bush - the commies were and are fascists, Megan. Vicious, murderous, horrible thugs. For me, it's nothing to joke about, megan.

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  3. Elmer, just because you've decided to make your own personal definition of the word "fascist" and then harass people about it does not mean that I think the atrocities of the Soviet regime are a joke.

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  4. We don't need enemies when there are 'friends' like 'elmer'...

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  5. Megan, if you can tell me the difference between the "fascists" and the commies, I'm all ears.

    And by the way, that includes all of the Kuchmists and sovok thugs, both in Ukraine, and in Russia, who declared themselves to be "democrats," and started blowing each other up, and anyone who happened to get in the way of their thuggery.

    Ukraine is trying to work its way out of all that blundering.

    And I'm going to tell you again, because you're not listening - my comments regarding commies and sovoks are not reflecting on Neeka.

    I'm all ears, megan.

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  6. I'm really tired of the chorus that this blog has acquired in the past month or so.

    Elmer, please read Megan's last comment carefully. You're making a fool of yourself.

    Most of what you write here 'reflects' on you only. Not that this should bother you, of course, as long as you've got your relative anonymity.

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  7. Neeka, you're obviously free to delete my comments if you don't like what I say.

    You are also free to wallow in sovok nostalgia if you like.

    I don't, and I won't.

    By the way, I'm going to tell you the difference between the sovoks and the "fascists."

    My friend who survived the Holodomor was taken into Nazi slave labor during WWII - one of the millions of non-Jews to whom this happened.

    A few years ago he received a settlement check as compensation.

    It was obviously not sufficient to compensate him for those lost years - but it was something.

    What have all the sovok victims received? Vitrenko and the Party of Regions.

    Have fun watching the sovok cartoons, Neeka.

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  8. Elmer wrote:

    Neeka, you're obviously free to delete my comments if you don't like what I say.

    [...]

    Have fun watching the sovok cartoons, Neeka.


    I sure will, Elmer!

    Thanks and bye-bye!!!

    :)))

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  9. 'Elmer' works for the Kremlin. Kremlin wants everyone to believe that Ukranians think Jews are pigs and Nazi are cool. 'Elmer' poses as Ukrainian here and says what Kremlin wants to be said.

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  10. Elmer,

    I wouldn’t read too much Sovok into Soviet cartoons.

    Nor would I interpret the act of watching them as a pledge of allegiance to the Soviet Union. The cultural symbolism in what Veronica has shared with us has no political context. The context is purely psychological.

    As a Soviet-born (1980) Ukrainian, I like watching Soviet cartoons. Most Soviet cartoons are didactic rather than doctrinaire. They represent the best of animation art. Watching them brings out the inner child in me, not the inner communist.

    Until the early 90s, we had no foreign-made cartoons on our state television. The first two Walt Disney animated series to be shown on our state television were DuckTales and Chip’n’Dale Rescue Rangers.

    Unless we express our emotions thoughtfully, we run the risk of being misunderstood. Let’s learn from the cartoons. I like Walt Disney ones, too.

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  11. Dear Taras,

    Thanks for this comment. I couldn't have said it better.

    I wish I had your patience, too. And - I wish there were more people like you, here and elsewhere.

    As for the lack of "political context" in my post about Aleksandr Tatarsky's cartoons - there is enough of it, actually:

    That interview with Tatarsky, it was done by The New Times, a Russian weekly that regularly runs pieces by Valeriya Novodvorskaya, Yevgeniya Albats, Victor Shenderovich and other non-conformist Russian folks.

    Also, the interviewer at one point admitted that when she got to watch Padal proshlogodniy sneg as an adult, a year ago, she was amazed to discover how anti-Soviet it was.

    And Tatarsky replied that the cartoon had been banned soon after its release.

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