Two villages right next to Kyiv - Gorenka (pop. 5,358) and Moshchun (pop. 794). The first one is adjacent to Pushcha Vodytsya, which is officially part of Kyiv's Obolon District. The second one is some 3 km away from Gorenka. Both still have streets named after Lenin - unrenamed streets. This is embarrassing. The usual excuse - lack of funding - doesn't seem convincing: in the past five years, we've seen tons of money wasted on too many election campaigns, and I'd rather see some new street signs on the fences, among many other things, than the faces of those idiots and their promises of change and what not. It is different, of course, if it's the locals who prefer to keep the old street names. Different, but no less embarrassing.
Here is Gorenka's Lenin St.:
And here's Moshchun - Lenin St., Lenin Lane, and Zhovtneva - October - Street, named after the 1917 revolution:
This one is my favorite - extremely schizophrenic...
P.S. Some info on Gorenka & Moshchun -
here (UKR). Soviet-time info mostly: lots of cow-milking
kolkhoz stats, for example... :)
Indeed, "Ленин всегда живой...Ленин всегда с тобой..."
ReplyDeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteIn 1989, the TV Programm Vzgliad faced suppression by the Central Committee , not for unveiling the 1937 slaughters... nor the wasting of cereal crops or any other down-to-earth scandal. No, it was for claiming that the mummy of Lenin be buried next to his wife, in the Leningrad oblast.
That is what I read yesterday in Hedrick Smith's "The New Russians". The cult of Lenin might be the last collective delirium to disappear.A kind of father figure.. that no one has embodied since.
Sigh...
Genia