Terry's Russia Blogosphere

Spring Painting Season in Moscow

Well, the Spring painting season has begun here in Moscow. 

As an example, I took this picture of a nearby statue which has been repainted for the summer season.  I call him "Platinum Lenin".  He gleams, he glistens and he even almost glows in the sun!  You can see him from a mile away!

This statue is interesting in that it was obviously torn down in the early '90's.  He's cracked all the way through and his nose is missing.  When they threw off communism these statues were some of the first targets, yet, he has been repaired and gets a fresh coat of paint each year. 

This year's paint was outstanding though.  He's usually a dull silver and quite unremarkable.  Now he is downright luminescent! 

Lenin statues are not the only things that get a new coat of paint for the Spring though.  It reminds me of our Army policy of "if it doesn't move, paint it". 

Fences, posts, curbs and trees all get the treatment. It really helps to freshen up the city.  If you can see the curbs around this monument you can see that they're painted too.  This year, we got a colorful change from the usual black and white.  Our curbs are now a bright gold and green!

I woke up one Saturday morning to the smell of oil based paint.  Wondering what was going on, I went over to the window to see crews of central Asian workers slapping paint all over the place.  When I went down later to get into the car I found that my little black car had psychedelic wheels!  It was almost flower power man.  Dig! 

Now I am with all the other cool cars running around our streets with green and gold tires. 

I'm glad Spring has sprung.  Our park is being beautified too.  They cut all the branches off the trees and painted the trunks where the branches were, you guessed it, green.  At least the tulips are coming up through the ground.  In a couple of weeks it will be really nice. 

Now if the city would only turn off the central heating in the offices and apartments; it is already over 70 degrees here and the heat is still blazing.  The official dates for turning it off is May 15th.  Maybe we'll have a few days of warm temps and they'll go ahead and shut them down. 

I'm ready for a walk in the park now. 

A Place of Suffering

I am touched on a deeper level in my heart at the suffering which has taken place here in Ukraine; the more we spend time here in the capital Kiev, the more we are touching history with our own hands.   

Ukraine is a small nation not only in landmass but in human population as well.  Indeed, there would be millions more people here had it not been for World War II and the Soviet years under Josef Stalin and his subsequent dictators.

During the war there were literally tens of millions of lives snuffed out in this place.  Death was not limited to one group of people either.

When Hitler sought to conquer the Slavic peoples by genocide, his first target was Ukraine.  He swept into this nation with Operation Barbarossa, bringing an invading army of three million Germans.  At first, the Ukrainians welcomed them as they pulled into town by cheering them in the streets.  They were already tired of the Soviet Union's domination of their nation which was barely 20 years old at that time.  They soon found the Nazis to be inhuman as citizens were hanged in the streets and all rights were taken away. 

I lament the fact that history is so soon forgotten.  Human suffering is always the result when individual rights are taken away by government.  That suffering can come gradually or suddenly, of course, but it comes just the same. 

After the Nazi regime was pounded to defeat by the Red Army, the communists had control of Ukraine and the idea of democracy was only a dream.  The prevailing concept over the years was that when socialism goes away we will have order and freedom, just like in America.  Now America is trying to become like the Soviets and I fear for the citizens there too.

It is time for us to look at the not so distant past and realize just what it is that we are giving up.  Ukrainians are still fighting for their survival and independence.  Religious freedom must be maintained and a stable democracy is the only answer to that.