Sunday, June 04, 2006

What's next, a statue of Beria?

Remember those statues of Stalin which have been going up lately? From the Washington Post:
A monument to Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled Friday in the Belarusian capital Minsk, provoking protests from human rights defenders and opposition politicians.

Dzerzhinsky, reviled by critics of the Soviet era, helped establish the first Soviet secret service, called the Cheka, in 1917 under Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB, was responsible for mass arrests and executions.

The towering 10-foot bronze figure, a copy of the statue of Dzerzhinsky that pro-democracy crowds tore down in front of KGB headquarters in Moscow in 1991, occupies a spot inside the grounds of the Military Academy. Dzerzhinksky was known as 'Iron Felix." He was born in modern-day Belarus
According to a BBC article published when the original statue was taken down:
Under Dzerzhinsky, the first of a string of forced labour camps - what became known as the Gulag archipelago - was set up on the remote Solovetsky islands, south of the Arctic Circle.
(Hat Tip: Drink-soaked Trostkyite Popinjays for WAR)

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