http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lk59PXSeIgE/U4yo9VKQ_kI/AAAAAAAAJjs/kJLyL-IAWOk/s1600/donetsk+soviet+flag.jpg
It's from Donetsk, maybe a year ago. A quick Google search pulled it up, I needed a picture like this.
What do you see?
I see a woman with a Soviet cap and a Soviet banner. That's what I see. I suspect that the statue behind her is Lenin. I know that it's in Donetsk because that's what I'm told and it's in keeping with lots of similar pictures from Donetsk. It sort of looks like other pictures of the main maidan in Donetsk.
After that its gets messy.
Part of me sees a woman sporting the symbolism of a hateful regime that was imperialist and colonialist, that espoused a program of russification of the territory and gave advantages to Russians. That confiscated grain from farmers and executed them if they didn't turn it over because the political base of the regime was the proletarian workers in the cities, who produce no grain. Who oppressed the German and Tatar peoples living in the area and managed to wipe out their historical traces. The symbols are representative also of the way the Soviet Army, now considered to have been the
Russian Army, invaded and oppressed Ukrainians. Donetsk used to be called Yuzovka after Hughes, the builder of the first large steel mill in the area (a Brit), but that was too humiliating and it was renamed Stalino. Later it was renamed after its territory, Donetsk, under Khrushchov. The flag is a symbol of Russian supremacy and worshipped, with Russian Orthodox icons, as a symbol of Russian ethnic and cultural supremacy over lesser peoples. There's even been a proposal to have a two-tiered system of laws in Russia, one for Russians and another for Slavs--one that wasn't taken seriously, but was proposed by an ally of Putin.
Part of me sees the symbols of a regime that let kids starve on the street if their parents were politically hated, and who punished kids for their parents "crime" of having too much money or not being pro-Bolshevik. A regime that kept the country backwards and who centralized power and authority and privilege in the hands of a small number of people, and who killed millions in re-education/work camps and incarcerated far more for fun and profit. Who convinced the people that their country was the richest and most advanced. Who substituted fake universal care at a primitive level for better care, and who used the right to have a job given by the government as a means of coercion, since being fired by the government immediately meant you were a parasite and could be prosecuted as such.
Part of me sees the symbols of a country which pulled together and produced a multi-ethnic army that, after withering losses, managed to largely defeat Hitler's army and drive them back, weakening them and helping to defeat a pernicious racist fascism that killed millions. A country which in the absence of revolutionary fervor found a unifying force in the rightness of that victory and nobility in suffering to fight a moral scourge.
Part of me sees the symbol of a country which managed to dispose of a lot of backwardness and produce some great science and math and music, which managed to improve the living conditions of their people in the course of 30 years, managed to sent men to outerspace and hold a large, divided populace together.
Part of me sees a woman who's suffered in the last decade or so as her economic fate and that of her parents has undoubtedly declined as pensions and salaries have declined, as the area's industries have faltered and often failed, and who doesn't know why but believes that the central government is responsible for all things good and bad; who is in fear of Ukrainian fascist government that would prevent her from using her native language and which has only hatred for her culture and who wants to deprive her of any input. Who's proud of Russian literature and her language, and knows that in the past Ukrainian fascists have fought the tsar and the Soviet (Russian) government. And who knows that NATO is there, waiting to occupy her land, steal the gas that's under it, and deprive her and her family of the prosperity that's due them. A woman who also knows that the great military victory and economic uplift is dismissed and delegated to the dustbin of history by those who have only hate for Russia, which immediately means that her very identity--finding vicarious satisfaction in the victory over the Nazis, at the expense of millions of dead and great suffering--is called crap. The past was better and she'd like to live in the past. Or make the present like the past--good pensions, good jobs, cleaner, more moral cities.
I'm almost willing to bet that she's a member of the Communist Party, because a fair number of those sporting such symbols have, in the past, turned out to like the CPSU and despise the evils of capitalism. They like the ideals of free health care, equitable standards of living, good jobs, and all the things the CPSU promised, even if it couldn't deliver. That might be what she says those symbols mean of her legacy.
All of that's her legacy. To focus on what we think is the important part--perhaps that she's on the side of genocide and forced starvation, of political repression and cultural supremacy,l maybe she likes socialized health care and apartments--is to do that anonymous woman a great disservice. She quite possibly already feels threatened, put upon by change, and trying to argue her into saying she believes something she doesn't is, frankly, purest idiocy and arrogance. And while I strongly suspect that when push came to shove she'd say Russian culture is superior and the future, I doubt that her main focus is on hurting others. For me to say she's evil for not dismissing what she says her legacy is is an act of egregious ill-will on my part. It's judging her by what
I think of her symbols and legacy, and not what she thinks of her symbol and legacy. It's a bald-faced assertion that I know more about what she's thinking than what she's thinking. It's saying she's a piece of meat and not a person, while I'm so far, far superior to her that I can judge her and condemn her in the most stark, absolutist terms based entirely on a piece of cloth and a hat and my own suspicions.
It's stereotyping on steroids.
This does not mean there aren't such. There are always such. Plotnicky says that Kiev's run by Jews and he wants them all killed, that the Euromaidan was really the Jewromaidan. Zakharchenko insists that they're all fascists who want to eradicate all things Russian and he delights in the idea of surrounding Kiev and destroying the Ukropy in their homes (Japanese : Jap :: Ukrainian : Ukrop). There are those who believe that the only good "Ukrop" is a dead Ukrop and wants to see them killed or at least properly supervised by their betters. But if you look at the people there, you get a wide diversity of views and opinions--some rooted in hate, some in pride, some in fear and disinformation or misinformation. All of them, however, result in support of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), and many of those turn to Soviet imagery. Some of the imagery is from the zastoi, the period of stagnation under Brezhnev; others go to Lenin; many go to Stalin, when the country was both most repressive but also experienced the greatest uplift and the greatest military victory.
Even in Slavyansk, just up the road, surveys show that (a) they want to be in Ukraine and not the DNR, (b) they don't trust the DNR, (c) the Ukrainian government started the war long before the first shot was fired, (d) they don't trust the Ukrainian government to respect their rights and culture.
And at the same time, not only do I know that this woman's legacy is really mixed and there's no way to judge what she thinks her legacy is, I could repeat most of those points from the Ukrainian perspective, to show that any random person with the light-blue (blakytnyi) and yellow is a fascist, a patriot, an anti-Semite, and Russophobe, a patriot, enlightened or benighted. I happen to think that the DNR and LNR are tools meant to sow hatred and disruption and, in general, are to be despised. But that's the DNR and LNR, not every living soul that chooses to support them.
It's hard to insist on "I don't know" when peer pressure demands on strictly binary, all-right or all-wrong thinking, so you're really echoing Bush II's "you're with us or against us." But there you go. I know know about this woman. Just like I don't know about the random person with a Confederate flag.
Roof? Waving a Confederate flag was a racist act. There's good evidence.
Ryan in my class, with his Confederate belt-buckle? Who the hell knows? My only evidence is my suspicion. In 9 months he did nothing obviously racist. Got no evidence? While there's a great urge, an inner yearning to be judgmental and condemn him, sorry. Got no basis for judgment. If I say he's innocent, sure, he's white, right? If I say he's guilty, sure, he's white, right? All it indicates is my own inner bias. I try to deny my inner bias whenever I can; I find it's in the way of my critical thinking skills.
The girl who was called a racist by Jim in the dorm when she wore a Confederate flag? Not racist. The John Schneider picture on the front said all that needed to be said: She thought he was cute and liked the Dukes of Hazzard. No ideology because, let's face it, a lot of people just aren't into ideology to that extent. Tolerance is a bear. Judgmentalism is unbearable, no matter who's doing it. It gets in the way of critical thinking.
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