By Alexander Maistrovoy
In April 1918, the Bolshevik government headed by Lenin signed the decree "On the Monuments of the Republic."
Monuments "in honor of the kings and their servants" must be demolished, but with a significant stipulation: if they had no "significance from either historical or cultural point of view". This allowed preserving a significant part of cultural and architectural heritage of Russia.
Thanks to it, in our time tourists can see the beautiful monuments of Russian tsars and emperors, although all of them were "ruthless exploiters of the working people":
- Peter the Great, who built Saint Petersburg on the bones of millions of peasants; Catherine the Great; Alexander I of Russia (famous Alexandrovskaya Kolonna in Petersburg),
- Paul I of Russia and so on.
- People's Commissariat for Education even preserved the monument to Nicholas I because of its cultural value (the monument was erected by the French architect Auguste de Montferrand). Nicholas I is traditionally considered a retrograde and tyrant in Russian historiography.
Moreover, instead of desecrating monuments to the great, like the "Antifa" did with the monument to Miguel Cervantes in San Francisco, the Bolshevik Government erected monuments to many great figures of the past, for example poets Heine and Goethe.
For the Bolsheviks all these people were not faceless and odious DWEM (Dead White European Males), but an object of national pride, heritage of the world culture. Yes, the Bolsheviks dreamed about the "new world", but unlike Antifa and the BLM, they didn’t want to lose continuity with the past, and on the contrary, attempted to strengthen and emphasize it in every possible way.
Do I mean to say that the Bolsheviks were better than Antifa and the BLM? Not exactly... I want to say that they were much better than them!
Antifa and BLM cannot stand comparison with Lenin and Trotsky. No! There is only one relevant analogy — the Islamic State. That’s where we really see a complete and stunning resemblance: the desire for a total destruction of History as such, destruction of all artifacts of the "old world", regardless of their historical and cultural value.
Monuments to Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt, Nelson, Churchill, Kipling, Cervantes, even Lincoln and Gandhi are doomed to destruction like the masterpieces of Palmyra, Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, the Assyrian Nimrud and the library of Mosul.
Is it not symbolic that both the ISIS and the “fighters against racism” are calling for the demolition of the Giza pyramids?
The resemblance is not limited to the demolition of monuments and destruction of artifacts. The absolute similarity of the ideologies is also manifested in the system of destruction of personality.
The Bolsheviks committed many disgusting and monstrous bloody crimes, but they didn't put people on their knees. It was a weapon from the arsenal of other cultures.
There is a deep and ancient symbolism in this very action. A human put down on the knees ceases to be a human. They are turned into a slave, a worm that can be crushed, or perhaps can be spared. But even when spared, they are no longer a human being – they are worms. Such methods were widely practiced in the Asian tyranny of the past and present, for example, during the "cultural revolution" in Maoist China and under Pol Pot's regime. They have been replicated by the ISIS and today have become a way of subjugation of the "white masses" of the West too.
The similarity between the current "revolutionaries" of the West and the Islamic State is not limited to symbolism. It is much deeper. A significant part of the Russian elite supported the Bolshevik revolution, just as the Western elite supports the BLM and Antifa now.
The overthrow of the Nicolas II occurred with the direct support of Russian generals, many of whom, as famous as Aleksei Brusilov, subsequently sided with the Bolsheviks.
The Russian intelligentsia thirsted for the destruction of monarchy. Many representatives of the nobility, like Minister of Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin, People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, writer Count Alexei Tolstoy, Count Aleksey Ignatyev, worked for the Bolshevik's Government.
However, there is a significant difference. Aristocrats who served Soviet Russia thirsted NOT to destroy their country, but to change it for the better. The globalists behind Antifa and the BLM don’t thirst for for reforms. They thirst for the total destruction of Western civilization as such, destruction of nation-states and national democracies in the name of their utopias or dubious interests.
The revolutionaries of Russia can be understood, if not justified. They dealt with dying despotism, obsolete "prison of nations".
Current progressives and globalists have inherited healthy, stable, and prosperous communities that eliminated or nearly eliminated essentially all the flaws and shortcomings of the past. They don’t demolish dying, rotten regimes. Instead they bulldoze forceful democratic states.
They are driven by blind hatred and they are no different from the builders of the "new Caliphate."
Like the progressives in the West, the "jihadists" and Iran are absolutely indifferent to the fate of Muslim states. They are ready to destroy entire countries completely and they do it without the slightest remorse wherever they can: in Syria, Libya or Yemen.
Antifa and BLM receive support from Western globalist elites; ISIS and "jihadists" – from Islamic clergy. Two heads of hydra torment the body of the world civilization.
However, hydra has problems. Her heads can't tolerate rivalry, and at the earliest opportunity they will cross swords. And one doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict who will be the winner in this battle...
Born in Moscow, Alexander Maistrovoy is a journalist based in Israel and the author of “Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger)”, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Free Press International
