Nazis Triumph Over Communists in Ukraine

[Purveyor]

May 19, 2015 1:04 PM EDT
By Leonid Bershidsky

It's goodbye Lenin, hello Nazi collaborators in Ukraine these days. Laws signed into effect by President Petro Poroshenko require the renaming of dozens of towns and hundreds of streets throughout the country to eliminate Soviet-era names. At the same time, Ukraine will begin to honor groups that helped Hitler exterminate Ukrainian Jews during World War II.

Ukrainians' desire for a European identity and a break with the country's Soviet past is Poroshenko's biggest political asset, but these latest steps should worry the country's Western allies.

A law Poroshenko signed May 15 bans all Soviet and Nazi symbols, even on souvenirs, and criminalizes "denying the criminal character" of both totalitarian regimes. It bans place names, monuments and plaques glorifying Soviet heroes, Soviet flags and communist slogans. Statues of Lenin have been toppled in many Ukrainian cities since the "revolution of dignity" last year, but the new law goes further.

Big regional centers such as Dnipropetrovsk (named after Grigory Petrovsky, who ran Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s) and Kirovograd (bearing the name of Sergei Kirov, a Bolshevik leader whose popularity rivaled Stalin's, causing the latter to have him killed), as well as dozens of smaller towns, will need new names. Lots of towns have streets named after Lenin and Soviet saints, and these will also be erased in the next few months, creating lots of confusion for anyone using old maps (or Google maps, for that matter). Soviet emblems will be removed from buildings and bridges, murals in the subway will be altered.

Read more: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-19/nazis-triumph-over-communists-in-ukraine

[bobalew]

1. Interesting how you've managed to say one thing, yet express another...

The cognitive dissonance, and obvious contradictions in your headline VS the contents, is highly annoying. If this was picked verbatim from Bloomberg, then I guess I get it, but a sarcasm emblem would have helped. On the other hand if you're dead-set serious, well, Oh Boy.... Where do I start? Maybe the bolsheviks, aren't such a bad group to commemorate, prior to Stalin & his goons. Hitler? Are you kidding me? How about a new set of heroes? And not anything on Putin's side, either. What a Cluster F&*K, over there...
My guess if the Ukrainians are left to their own devices, they'd be able to sort this stuff out. But things get crazy when you're under siege, especially when it's Putin, & he's lying about it. Someone needs to pay for the downed Plane of innocent passengers. Alcohol had a very large part to play in that...