The circus left, but the clowns remained

They say that in 1969, celebrating the anniversary of the decree signed by Lenin in 1919, according to which all circuses in the country became state circuses on one day, a cheerful poster was hung on the pediment of the Moscow circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard - “50 years of the Soviet circus.” They also say that the poster was soon removed, because even stupid party officials realized the ambiguity of this expression.

However, in the early 90s of the last century, the “Soviet circus”, to everyone’s relief, really left, or, more precisely, we all left it. But the Soviet clowns, alas, remain. In particular, in the Russian Foreign Ministry. Last Saturday, they performed their inimitable clowning on the occasion of the signing of the 2008 proclamation by US President George W. Bush in connection with Captive Peoples Week.

The American president, who also sometimes makes the public laugh, this time expressed a completely trivial idea that in the 20th century communism and Nazism were “the same evil.” For the whole world, this is the same banal truth as for physicists - Archimedes' law, for chemists - the periodic law, and for first-graders the statement that two plus two equals four.

But everything is not so simple at the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Last week, US President George W. Bush signed another proclamation on the topic of “captive peoples,” with whom he speaks annually on the basis of a law adopted during the Cold War era. In general, everything is as usual, but this time there is one “innovation”: a completely unambiguous sign of equality between German Nazism and Soviet communism, which are now interpreted as the “single evil” of the 20th century,” says a statement from the Department of Information and Press of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs RF.

What an insult to compare communism with Nazism! And this despite the fact that in some respects the communist comrades left the Nazi comrades far behind - for example, in terms of the extermination of citizens of their own country or the state betrayal of their own prisoners of war. Who would have thought that 17 years after the collapse of the communist system, the Russian Foreign Ministry would officially defend communism?

No, of course, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation is not the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and midaks do not fully justify the crimes of communism. “Condemning the abuse of power and the unjustified severity of the internal political course of the Soviet regime of that time, we, however, cannot be indifferent to attempts to equate communism with Nazism and agree that they were driven by the same thoughts and aspirations,” it said in a commentary from the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is similar to how police officers who have been put on trial for torture and murder of civilians are accused in our country of exceeding their official powers. Well, it’s as if the guys overdid it, showed excessive zeal, and misunderstood the interests of the service. And the thoughts and aspirations are correct, not even criminal. This is exactly how the Russian Foreign Ministry evaluates the theory and practice of communism in our country.

Honestly, why be surprised? Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov is a graduate of MGIMO (1972), career diplomat, communist (member of the CPSU until 1991). Director of the Department of Information and Press of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Andrei Nesterenko is also a graduate of MGIMO (1977), a member of the CPSU, and since 1977 he has worked in various positions in the central apparatus of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in diplomatic missions abroad. Is it they, proven Komsomol members (others were not admitted to MGIMO), communists who made a professional career during the times of Brezhnev and Andropov, who will say an unkind word about communism? Yes, only under threat of dismissal!

Today the situation is such that those who criticize the communist past are more likely to be fired from the Foreign Ministry than those who glorify it. Because we get up from our knees, remember what we were taught at school during history lessons and at institutes during lectures on Marxism-Leninism, and then mutter by rote what is forever ingrained in our brains: “Historical facts indisputably testify that it was the USSR that made a decisive contribution to the victory over German fascism. It was thanks to the Soviet Union and the military and labor feats of the Soviet people that Europe was saved from Nazi occupation and enslavement. The memory of this will forever remain in the hearts of grateful descendants.” This is not from the decisions of the next congress of the CPSU, as you might have thought, but all from the same Saturday commentary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Why would old Soviet vocabulary, hackneyed propaganda clichés, and poor arguments of Soviet foreign policy start popping up today? “It’s sad that in the new realities of the 21st century, the old “cold war” for people’s minds continues, using dubious methods,” the Foreign Ministry said in a commentary. “This is the wrong way.”

How can it not continue if the Russian Foreign Ministry openly defends communist ideology? The Cold War was the result of the confrontation between Western democracy and Soviet communism, and it was the right path, the right way out in relations with Soviet totalitarianism, the only alternative to the capitulation of the West to the international communist system. Today, the Russian Foreign Ministry, whitewashing communism, is quite consciously opening the front of the Cold War and announcing its readiness for it. This war could again harshly divide Russia into a herd of clowns rising from their knees, and the few supporters of Russia’s democratic future sitting in camps and prisons.