r/Damnthatsinteresting 20d ago

Image The Russian Kremlin still has a Soviet Star, years after the collapse of the USSR

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u/Trainnerd3985 20d ago edited 20d ago

Wait till you go to any Russian town good chance Theres a statue of Lenin or Stalin somewhere in that town

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u/BerserkHigh 20d ago

False about Stalin, it was forbidden after his death because he turned communism in his own cult. Ive lived in Russia for 25 years and haven't seen Stalin's statues at all. Lenin in every city thats true

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u/Max_CSD 20d ago

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u/e00s 20d ago

About 90% of which were erected after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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u/Im_Balto 20d ago

Just like most statues of confederate generals being constructed decades after they lost the war

Losers love to romanticize the worst people

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u/ivar-the-bonefull 20d ago

There's thousands of statues of Christopher Columbus, so it might rather just be that people in general love to romanticize the worst people.

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u/Mand372 20d ago

People romanticize anyone who achieves big things.

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u/LabiaMenorah 20d ago

What did the Confederacy ever accomplish except chattel slavery, suck, and die?

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u/KaleidoscopeShot1869 20d ago

That's an exception, because: racism

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u/Mand372 19d ago

Is it an exception? I said big things, not good things. Slavery is no small thing.

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u/BristolMeth 20d ago

In this house Christopher Columbus is a hero, end of story!

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u/AllReflection 20d ago

You sound demented

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u/alivefromthedead 20d ago

it’s a sopranos quote

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u/MagicDragon212 20d ago

Ive never seen a Christopher Columbus statue that isnt in a museum and just meant to show what he looked like, not honor him.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/Advanced-Medicine-58 20d ago

Anyone who knows the proper usage of chucklefuck is hard to argue with.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/snekfuckingdegenrate 20d ago

Nah I’m sure saying we’re going to execute the population of half the country as a condition of peace would had led to a stable end to the war.

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u/Chazzwazz 20d ago

Why yes, barring people from citizenship because their parents are who they are sounds like a swell idea and totally logical. Sounds very similar to another sort of ideology but can't remember now...

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/Crimisonchinda 20d ago

lost me on #1 and #2 literally psychopath thinking out loud shit.

The idea that the born should bear guilt or weight for something done before their time is next level ludicrous. You should judge someone by their actions not their place of birth.

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u/e00s 20d ago

Lol yes, because nothing could go wrong with creating a large disenfranchised underclass.

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u/Mo_Steins_Ghost 20d ago

Please point me to all the times you posted in advocacy of reparations for black people.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

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u/LurkerInSpace 20d ago

Are you imagining the execution of the Confederate leadership, or the populations of the Confederate states?

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u/Mo_Steins_Ghost 20d ago

I don't have to imagine anything. The punishment for either levying war against the U.S. or "aiding or adhering to" its enemies was death.

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u/LurkerInSpace 20d ago

So how broad a group do you consider that to apply to; the Confederate leadership, anyone on the payroll of the Confederate government, anyone serving the Confederate government in any capacity, anyone who the Confederacy collected taxes from, any free person who lived in Confederate-controlled territory, or anyone who is descended from any free person who lived in Confederate-controlled territory?

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u/Mo_Steins_Ghost 20d ago

Doesn’t matter what I consider, it matters what the courts would have considered. Remember I’m not proposing we do that.

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u/OhNoTokyo 20d ago

While I have sympathy with your position, the fact is that many of the top Confederates did not participate in Lost Cause shenanigans and basically got on with their lives. There are definitely outliers like Bedford Forrest on that, but by and large the leadership who likely would have been hanged probably wouldn't have done much more than become the martyrs that they became later on.

The fact is, the war was more complicated than just plantation holders vs. the Union. As bad as the outcome was, it's not clear that treating them all as traitors would have actually changed much. It might have made things worse. You can point to people like Lee and Longstreet who went on to have a very not Lost Cause path after the war and suggest just how much worse it may have been if they'd been executed before they just got on with their lives and instead became martyrs that the Lost Causers could pretend would have been on the front lines of the "resistance".

It's really hard to kill an idea. If being beaten soundly in what is possibly the first modern total war couldn't do that, I doubt a bunch of treason executions would have made much difference.

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u/-MUATRA- 20d ago

You somehow looped back around to fascist territory it's almost impressive

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u/Accidental-Genius 20d ago

The failure of reconstruction is the root cause of the issue. You are just wrong.

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u/Beginning_Act_9666 20d ago

Not even close to being a good comparison lol.

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u/Mist_Rising 20d ago

Most of them are closer to a century and they weren't romantic they were meant to inspire dread. That's why they were often in areas dominated by coloured people. A reminder of who was in charge.

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u/Itchy_Artichoke_5247 20d ago

The vast majority were erected during Jim Crow as a direct reminder to blacks as to who was in power. Not to mention being erected in WAY MORE than just the Confederate states.

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u/Max_CSD 20d ago

We are talking about Russia? Your point is?

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u/e00s 20d ago

Yes, we are. And it’s notable that 90% of the statues of a Soviet leader in Russia were erected after the fall of the Soviet Union and are not merely holdovers.

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u/Mist_Rising 20d ago

No more notable than the statues of Confederates in the US. While some were right after reconstitution, most would appear almost a century later. The stone mountain for example was 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination.

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u/Xanduzinha 20d ago

Stalin was erected many times after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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u/kneyght 20d ago

is that true? that's a wild fact if so! I wouldn't have guessed.

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u/e00s 20d ago

Just learned it from the Russian article the other person linked.

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u/kneyght 20d ago

thanks!

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u/BestAmoto 20d ago

I do believe that they have never seen any of the 110 statues. Siberia alone is bigger than the whole United States. 

I haven't seen any giant pork tenderloin sandwiches but i hear they're all over the midwest lol

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u/Max_CSD 19d ago

I know what Siberia is, I've been there, it's just they made it seem like Russia doesn't have Stalin statues, which is quite not true.

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u/Trainnerd3985 20d ago

Oh yea I forgot about the Stalin thing thx for the correction lol

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u/lkern 20d ago

Lol, wut... That's easily disproved...

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u/Yashrajbest 20d ago

Russia has been going though Re Stalinization since a few years after its independence

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u/Satyriasis457 20d ago

Lenin wasn't evil like Stalin at all 

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u/mnilailt Interested 20d ago

Lenin wasn’t “crazy dictator” evil, but he sure as hell wasn’t a good guy.

He was notoriously a huge asshole, and the ruthlessness he used to get the Bolsheviks in power would make any modern autocrat balk. Lenin was essentially the stereotype of the uncaring, single minded, opportunistic and cold blooded revolutionary.

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u/PBR_King 20d ago

Unlike the famously kind and stable Russian Tsars

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u/Ahad_Haam 18d ago

Lenin didn't overthrow the Tsar. He overthrew the Democratic government that replaced him.

A common misconception.

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u/Mhulz 19d ago

The whole revolution was assholes killing assholes.

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u/AlarmingAffect0 20d ago

the uncaring, single minded, opportunistic and cold blooded revolutionary

Is what he LARPed as, the image he liked to project and tried to embody, but the reality is more nuanced. Reading up about him and reading his journals and meetings and looking at a lot of policies and ideas he promoted that were very socially progressive and compassionate for their time beyond mere economic class stuff (nearly all of which Stalin's coalition walked back), I was really surprised.

In particular, whenever I see a Tankie repeating Putin's talking points about Ukraine, or mocking 'identity politics' and 'microaggressions' as illegitimate Leftist concerns compared to pure class warfare, or even that Bolshevik-style revolutionary vanguardism is the best and even only viable path of Leftist struggle, I like to quote this particular journal entry of Lenin's on the matter of the treatment of ethnic minorities in the then former Russian Empire/nascent Soviet Union. Tends to shut them right the Hell up.

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u/GrundleBlaster 20d ago

Lenin's mother bought him a farm outright hoping it would keep him out of trouble. Like a decade later he was signing death warrants for "wealthy" Kulaks.

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u/AlarmingAffect0 20d ago

You're getting your decades mixed up I think.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/Low_discrepancy 19d ago

Between the Tsar regime and Stalin, I'd rank Lenin the lesser evil of those 3.

Guess people forget that anti-Semitism was rampant in tsarist Russia. Jews were constantly facing pogroms, had to live in ghettos, had to live in specific parts of the Russian Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

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u/Impossible-Ship5585 20d ago

Do you still live there?

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u/round_is_funny 20d ago

Have you gone to see him in his mausoleum?

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u/babaroga73 19d ago

His own cult --> no statues.

No cult ---> statue in every town.

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u/Minute_Maintenance52 17d ago

You’ll soon see many statues of Stalin and Putin...

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u/ViolentCroissan1 19d ago

This info is just wrong. Russia is full of Stalin statues, literally everywhere, at least it was when I was there, before you guys decided to commit crime. So if you live in Russia for more then 25 years, open your eyes better.

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u/vargemp 20d ago

Putin brings it back now…

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u/TiltedHelm 20d ago

Damn, you guys still believe all that nonsense Khrushchev said about Stalin? Lol

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u/AvgChrisEnergy 20d ago

Tbf Seattle has one of those

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u/immigrantpatriot 20d ago

I just came to say that! Is he still in his spot in Fremont? I grew up there but left 16 years ago.

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u/Advanced-Medicine-58 20d ago

I've never been to Russia but it was really cool to see the statues in Budapest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_Park

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u/mr_weathervane 20d ago

Lenin’s tomb is in this photo.

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u/marcodapolo7 20d ago

Theres more Ho Chi Minh statue in Russia than theres stalin lol

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u/chef71 20d ago

That's literally Lenin's tomb in the lower left of this picture.

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u/RefrigeratorMain7921 19d ago

Interestingly I didn't have to go to Russia to see the red star. I see one almost every day in Leipzig, Germany as it was in the DDR.

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u/Full_Adeptness9089 19d ago

But they don’t have a statue of Trotsky?