I know the world is full of stupid...

[calime]

...but sometimes this fact is brought to mind by things close to home. Like the damn stupid riots in our dear capital, Tallinn, supposedly to protest the removal of a Soviet monument from the city centre to a more suitable location, namely the army cemetary. Human nature shines through "beautifully" though - the supposed 'protesters for the memory of the soviet war heroes' were more interested in looting the alcohol shops and the Hugo Boss boutique. Russian media and government alike spew acid, spitting out threats and accusations...I do wonder, while Russia loudly proclaims it will not have to apologise for crimes commited by USSR as it does not consider itself the inheritor of the USSR and that the USSR is dead and gone, why does Russia feel the need to yowl after a statue that was erected by thatsame dead and gone empire to commemorate the acts Russia does not consider its business to apologise for? But, well, being a power has always meant you never have to say you're sorry...I wonder, what made for example Germany so much more brave to take the responsibility for its history?
There are streets full of broken shop windows in my birth town and there are again concrete barricades on the roads leading to the seat of the Government. Reminds me rather uncomfortably of the times 16 years ago, what with dear tovarištš Žirinovski offering to send the tanks over too and all.
And almost none of the looters and rioters actually care about the fucking bronze statue...most of them are people younger than me who cannot really even tell what they're rioting for, only that they're angry and they need to put the anger into destroying something. Seems the anger in general is becoming more and more an universal human condition...
Just came home and saw the shop across the street was surrounded by police tape. Asked the neighbour; "Bomb threat," she answered. Luckily, here, those are still mostly only threats. And seeing as there is a national ban on selling alcohol in shops for the first half of this week (becasue of the riots), I can just lift my eyebrow and remark that there are no ends to what a frustration can take people who are forced to be sober. The sad thing is, the overall stupidity of all this makes me want to get drunk. I'm glad Tartu is rather quiet, though, at least.
And to crown it all off, it is snowing outside - wet snow and bonechilling wind, in one of those freaky cold bouts the spring can feature. Fitting, somehow. At least that makes in more unpleasant for brainless maniacs to gather outside and rampage around.
Oh, and a very nice spring holidays for you, too.

ETA:A good article on the matter in the Independent.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, well, looks like you (deliberately or not) are mixing all the stuff together.

1. Russia IS an inheritor state of the USSR if we talk about its position in the UN, about the treaties and agreements the USSR has signed, and etc.
But Russia IS NOT an ideological inheritor of the communist ideology, of the USSR and of its expensionist and revolutionary politics. Russia has done enough to throw communists out, Russia did a lot of efforts to uncover the crimes of the past and to reabilitate the innocents, so after 16 years after the collapse of the communist party, Russians think, that the matter is closed.

2. However, it must be clear that the Patriotic War in Russia is not considered as the "past war" of the USSR, but the war of Russia itself. It is not the war of communism and nazism, but the war of the Russian nation against the nazism and Nazi Germany. It is therefore a major part of national self-identification. Attempts to rewrite the history of this war are then regarded as attempts to rewrite the self-identification and are and will be strongly opposed.

[calime]

You know, if you are coming into someone else's parlour - or a livejournal - it'd be a common courtesy to introduce yourself.
Also, I am not going to start wank in my journal, but I'm going to answer you once.
You are entitled to your opinion, and I to mine. Both may be partly or wholly right or faulty. Paraphrasing Voltaire, I may not agree with your point of view, but I believe you have a right to express it (though I would prefer not to die for the possibility, if there is another way).
However, I fail to see what expressing anyone's political opinion in a modern wants-to-be-democratic world has to do with looting. If throwing in shop windows is a major part of stressing your national self-identification, I'd most definitely ask you to take your national self-identification off my country's main streets.
I'd also like to point out that while I will not argue the importance of the WWII or its part of the Russian self-identification, for an average Estonian that war was in no way patriotic. A soldier in a German uniform or a Soviet one - made no difference. He was either a representative of one of those two occupying powers that trampled back and forth over a little strip of land that had the bad fortune to be situated on the way to the Baltic Sea and was treated like a trinket to be taken or given by both Germany and the USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, anyone?); or, sadder still, he was someone's brother, father, husband, son, who was forcefully recruited into the corresponding army to fight for a foreign country.
So I can understand the reason why there are lots of Estonians who would not prefer to have to look at that uniform still displayed in the centre of their capital. I also understand that it has emotional value for lots of Russians, but I do not think that either view would have to be explained by getting drunk, rioting on the streets and breaking into the Hugo Boss Boutique.
I personally think the most just way would have been to leave Aljosha be with the necessary addition of also installing by his side the statue of the WWII soldier in the German uniform (I am referring to the Lihula monument that was a centre of that big fuss a couple of years ago) and dedicate the resulting ensemble to every poor soul who died in the WWII, with the heartfelt motto of "May the humankind never again be so stupid". But I guess that'd never come true - neither the memorial nor the humankind not being stupid bit. And, for the record, both nazi and communist ideologies are very very similar. Personally, I would never choose one over another; I'd fervently hope to avoid both for the rest of my life in any other form than a theoretical discussion of philosophy.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

that is so sad. I'm sorry that this is happening so close to home. Snow!

And love your WTF icon.

[calime]

Well, everyone always hopes nothing bad happens to them or lose to their home..but it is someone's home, always, so it just goes around, doesn't it? Nowhere's 'safe'. All the same world.
And WTF? is actually my most prevalent emotion over the whole thing.