Sometimes they come back

Where are you, the idols of my youth? Janos Kadar and Gustav Husak, Le Duan and Pham Van Dong, MPLA-Party of Labor and Farabundo Martí, Mengistu Haile Mariam and José Eduardo dos Santos. Even small children watched the “Time” program, and all these names, perceived as mantras, sounded daily from the screen and became an integral part of our lives.

And then there were the Sandinistas, who were against Samosa, there were the Contras and the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Ronald Reagan got burned. And there was Daniel Ortega...

It seemed that he remained forever in that childhood of mine, when we all worried together about the fate of a small country in Central America, which fought against the huge nasty America and its mercenaries, those same contras. America was also our enemy. Washington, with its “hawks”, “aggressive plans”, “Pershings” and “network of military bases around our borders” was the embodiment of everything bad that we pioneers were ready to fight with all our might when we grew up. In the meantime, we were rooting with all our hearts for the distant Nicaraguan barbel Ortega from the city of Managua.

We helped him until he, his comrades, and his regime were washed away by the waves of change that carried away all the other heroes of the Soviet era. But suddenly Daniel surfaced. He washed ashore like a bottle with a note thrown into the sea. Such bottles float for many years, and neither those who sent them nor those to whom they were addressed no longer exist. Although sometimes you come across stories on the Internet about postcards and letters delivered years later to their destination.

This postcard also arrived, and arrived on time. Ortega “surfaced” is no longer as impressive and not as mustachioed as he was 25 years ago. But if in those years we helped him, now he helped us. Because the planet is once again in turmoil. Once again, Washington hawks are hatching their aggressive plans, entangling us with a network of their military bases and placing on the borders, albeit not Pershing-2, but even more terrible missiles.

The only trouble is that other heroes of those years, unlike Daniel, remained in oblivion. Now he is our only friend. He fully and openly supported our country in its most important matter - the recognition of two new countries on the world map, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It would seem, how could Nicaragua know about this? Don't they really have more important and close things to do? If Lukashenko, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Castro remained silent, would anyone really blame Daniel Ortega for indecisiveness? They wouldn't even remember about him! But he doesn't need a reminder. And he doesn’t need a “special invitation”. We don’t remember, but he remembers.

After so many years, Ortega, with his courageous act, repaid all his debts to the Soviet people who supported him. Now in Tskhinvali and Sukhumi there will no longer be one foreign embassy each, but TWO! Or maybe there will be more? Quite! If Janos Kadar and Gustav Husak, Le Duan and Pham Van Dong, the MPLA-Party of Labor and Farabundo Martí, Mengistu Haile Mariam and José Eduardo dos Santos return to us.