#russia IS the ussr

[prussianmemes]

It is with heavy heart that the insanity has finally reached Leonid Brezhnev's hometown, Kamianske, will be dismantling their memorial to him tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM, July 27th 2023.

His entire life before coming to power was spent working in, and in the service of, the Ukrainian SSR. He rebuilt, renovated, and expanded the quality of life in Ukraine throughout most of his life.

It was he who built up the great city of Dnipro, kept Kyiv supplied and fed during the Second World War, who shielded his peers during the Great Purge, the only one who succeeded in relieving suffering during the 1946 famine, who restored Zaprozhie to prewar levels in incredible time and without terror. He never engaged in terror, he was one of the few who wholly and completely was engaged in his work with purpose and a cool head.

Like many others, his true identity was complicated. Sometimes calling himself a Ukrainian, sometimes Russian. Yet, he was a man loyal to his home above all.

Yet the iconoclastic fervor in the last year, this complete and total insanity, this call to completely revise and deny history, has come for Leonid in his home town.

There is no justification for this. No well reasoned, academic argument for this kind of collective denial, for anything other than immediate political gain and vanity.

[sovietpostcards]

“Strawberries” by Igor Kornilov (linocut, 1958)

[zvyozdochka]

Polar bear on board a Soviet icebreaker, 1970.

[vintagegeekculture]

"Viy" (1967), the only horror movie ever made in the Soviet Union.

[hummingbird-hunter]

The thing is, I have nothing against socialism or communism as a political ideology; trust me, I'm as anti-capitalist as they come. The leftism is really not the problem here.

The problem is when in their leftism, people – Americans, really, and western Europeans – use the ussr as this sort of goal, this complete antithesis to the modern capitalist society, this almost-utopian place to live. They use hammer and sickle symbol, the ussr anthem; sometimes, as a joke, sometimes, not so much.

Not only that clearly shows that they know absolutely nothing about the ussr – it's also spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not, which is especially insidious now, when russia is literally committing a genocide.

The ussr wasn't a socialist utopia where everyone is equal. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, responsible for colonisation and genocide of multiple people and cultures. Just like the russian Empire before it. Just like modern russia continues to do now.

For many Eastern European and Central Asian people, hammer and sickle is not just a symbol of a political ideology. It's the symbol, under which people were starved to death, imprisoned or executed for daring to write in their own language; in which cultures were erased, people – forcefully assimilated, stripped of their own national identity.

It's the propaganda of being "the same people, the same nation" that russians love to use; that westerners love to believe, for the sole reason of the oppressed daring to look similar to the oppressor; for the sole reason of Americans being unable to look past their own history and realize oppression comes in many shapes and forms.

By using the ussr symbols in your political movement, you're denying the atrocities commited under that symbol and spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not.

It's not "progressive" to wave around a hate symbol.

Do your research.

[opendirectories]

[soviet-amateurs]

Andrei Tarkovsky (4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) with his mother 1936

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

1930s/40s cartoon of Ukraine/russia/England/US that describes Ukraine's same situation in 2024.

[vintage-russia]

Glory to the Soviet troops who hoisted the banner of victory over Berlin!

Brandenburg Gate,Berlin (1945)

[humanoidhistory]

Cafeteria at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Protvino, USSR, 1970.

[sunflowerchan04]

Lovers on the embankment, Leningrad, circa. 1961-1969, by Vsevolod Tarasevich.

[folklorespring]

May 18 is the 80th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars from the territory of Crimea in 1944 by the Soviet authorities. It is also a remembrance day for the victims of this genocide.

Thread on deportation of Crimean Tatars

[sovietpostcards]

"Zoological Lotto", vintage board game designed by V. Vatagin (Soviet Russia, 1939)

[zvyozdochka]

Waiting for spring. Photo by Igor Gnevashev, USSR, 1980s.

[bobemajses]

Birobidzhan, Russian Far East (USSR), 1987: a celebration at the city's stadium to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Autonomous Region and its capital.

In the course of the 1930s and 1940s thousands of Jews had moved to Birobidzhan and its surroundings on the border with China. Jewish intellectuals, Yiddishists, survivors of pogroms and the shoah envisioned an utopia of post-oppression Jewish culture and an alternative to Zionism. But the land was miserably difficult for human habitation and a wave of arrests and purges instigated by the Soviet police quickly swept through the area, leading the community into disaster and disarray. Now, the population is barely 1% Jewish, but the authorities are trying to cultivate the memory of Jewish customs and the Yiddish language among the residents.

[vintagepromotions]

'Fight only in sports!'

Moscow Olympic Games poster featuring fencing (1980). Art and design by Z. Smekhov and D. Filatov.