Lenin's border

When Andrey Danilko, popular both in Russia and Ukraine, performing in the guise of Verka Serduchka, chose a song with the chorus “*Rush, goodbye!” to perform at the Eurovision festival . " *, or * " * Lasha, tumbai " *, in Moscow they were very offended by him and excluded from the list of invitees to solemn television events. * “ *Russia, goodbye *” is exactly what can infuriate the entire official-condo Russia - from politicians and diplomats to workers on social networks. And this official Russia reacted to the prohibition of communist propaganda in Ukraine with the same frenzy as it did to Serduchka's song

Own logic

Russian democrats and just decent people, and Ukrainians along with them, only shrug their shoulders: what are you offended by? Well, people banned communist symbols - they are not the first, they are not the last. What are you doing here? Are you communists?

But the irritation of official Russia has its own logic. Moreover, I would venture to say that official Russia is right. For Ukrainians, communist ideology is now Russia.

Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Ukrainian liberation movement of the 20th century knows that there was never any “own” communism in Ukraine. Traditional parties of the Russian Empire were popular among the population of large Russian-speaking cities. Among the Ukrainian peasantry, which became the backbone of the Ukrainian People's Republic, are their own, "autonomists", who, after the October Revolution, switched to positions of independent statehood. The name "Central Rada" was not translated into Russian from Ukrainian, so that the working people, God forbid, would not notice that this is the Council. That is, the same Soviet power as in Petrograd.

And hated at first by the Bolsheviks, and then by their "Russian world" heirs Grushevsky, Vinnichenko and, of course, Petliura - Soviet politicians elected to the Rada by workers, peasants and soldiers. It's just that in Ukraine - unlike in Russia - the Bolsheviks were in the minority in the Soviets. In many ways, by the way, also because they never understood the aspirations of the Ukrainians, continuing to consider the Little Russian provinces a “natural part” of the collapsing empire. And when they realized it, it was already too late: the Central Rada declared the independence of the UNR, Soviet Russia recognized this fact. But immediately she took up her favorite thing - mimicry. The first congress of a new party, the Bolsheviks of Ukraine, was held in Moscow. These newest Ukrainian Bolsheviks, who constituted a minority in the Ukrainian Soviets, moved to Kharkiv, closer to the Russian border, declared themselves the new government of the UNR and called for the help of brothers in mind. So almost a hundred years ago, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin played out the scenario that Vladimir Putin is now repeating.

Therefore, communism for Ukrainians is not at all the same as for Russians.

The Communist Party of Comrade Zyuganov - no matter how we feel about its ideology and opportunism - is still the flesh of the flesh of its own country. Imagine for a moment that there would be real political life in Russia. It is quite possible that the Communist Party - already without any Zyuganov - would have changed its name, abandoned radical slogans in ideology and become a classical left party. So, in fact, it happened with many communist parties in the countries of Eastern and Western Europe.

"Little Zyuganov"

But not with the Communist Party of Ukraine! Because the Communist Party of Ukraine is another party of comrade Zyuganov, even though it is led by “little Zyuganov,” comrade Simonenko. And the main idea of ​​this Communist Party is not that Ukraine becomes communist, but that there is no Ukraine. And if there was - then such as before 1991 - an obedient and reactionary "second republic".

When, at the end of the existence of the communist faction in the Ukrainian parliament, several deputies left it, having quarreled with Symonenko, I advised one of them to revive the real Ukrainian Communist Party - not pro-Russian, but Ukrainian. He recalled that such an experiment was undertaken almost a century ago, when the Ukrainian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (not Russian, operating in the Little Russian provinces, namely Ukrainian, it was a different party) called themselves the Ukrainian Communist Party (Borotbists). Lenin, sensing the danger, advised them to seek recognition from the Comintern. Well, the Comintern, in which Lenin's accomplice Zinoviev ruled, demanded that they disband and join the Bolsheviks. Which, by the way, they did, and many achieved important positions in the leadership of Soviet Ukraine - until they were all killed in the 30s as nationalists. My interlocutor listened to all this on the air, but somehow hesitated and did not accept the idea. And I know why. Because he, like all members of the Communist Party, can stop being a communist, but he cannot become a Ukrainian politician of any views.

Freedom card

Decommunization in Ukraine is the final recognition of the indisputable fact that communism itself was not an ideology here, but a trick, under which the restoration of the Russian Empire under a new name and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood were hidden. Yes, the Bolsheviks acted inventively, and not only in Ukraine. They did not join the occupied lands with “regions”, as Vladimir Putin once suggested to Alexander Lukashenko, but created a pseudo-state on them, which even opened a representative office in the UN after World War II. So after all, Putin has become a real statesman: he does not annex the Donetsk region to Russia, but only oversees the “state building” of the DPR. And Crimea, before becoming part of the Russian Federation, declared itself an independent state for several days - well, almost like Soviet Ukraine or the Far Eastern Republic in the 20s!

That is why, during the days of Maidan, Ukrainians rushed to overthrow the monuments to Lenin. Note, not to some figures of the Russian Empire, but to Lenin, because he finally turned into a symbol of enslavement and deceit for them. And the map of "Leninopad" gradually coincides with the map of freedom.

It would seem, well, who needs Lenin in Sevastopol or Donetsk? But it is needed. Because it is no longer communism. He is a symbol of the fact that the empire can be revived even after its seemingly irrevocable death. And therefore - the most relevant Russian politician of our time.

This simple conclusion is the answer to the question whether decommunization is possible in modern Russia. Rather, not decommunization will take place at an accelerated pace, but the restoration of communism without the communists. The current Russian government in the Bolshevik rulers will be interested not so much in ideology as in the tools for expanding the boundaries of the “Russian world”, which under Lenin and Stalin bore the pseudonym “Soviet”. Or is it now the “Russian world” - the pseudonym of the “Soviet world”, you can’t even make out.

Very little time will pass, and those Soviet leaders who have merit in this restoration and are not tainted with “wrong” origins will return to their pedestals to the stormy applause of the working people - as a response to the Ukrainian “fascists” and their Western patrons.

And that would make sense too. Because if today Russia condemns the communist ideology and the whole nightmare of its post-revolutionary history, this means that it will abandon the idea of ​​restoring the empire; that it will, in fact, return by February 1917, to freedom, equality and fraternity, which did not involve oppression, to the Constituent Assembly, at the first and only meeting of which the Ukrainian deputy spoke in his native language, and most of his colleagues applauded him approvingly. For today's rulers of Russia, the communist legacy is the main guarantee that this great return, deadly to imperial myths, will never happen.