Lenin as a golden calf

Letter to Russian girl who liked my solidarity pictures for Ukraine

See, I'm not obsessed with Lenin :D

This needs some clarification indeed because I certainly see there are many on the far left who are totally obsessed with him while I'm not. Okay, maybe I'm just a traitor who preaches about revolution while voting for the greens or the centre-left, but still I criticize these from a far left perspective and there are many far left parties in Europe I would vote for, which means I also belong to the far left. That being said, I really think these nostalgic commie assholes are a huge pain in the ass. No, I don't like them! I hate them. They keep posting this arrogant shit on their blogs and facebook pages about the Ukrainian protesters being the bad guys because some of them are nazis, and the police being the good guys because Lenin. What the fuck?

Yeah, my mom was also thinking like this. She's an ardent pro-western liberal actually, but still she said "Just so you know what you cheer, they toppled a Lenin statue!", thinking I would give a shit. Well, I don't! Why should I give a shit about a Lenin statue in Ukraine? What's the point of that big statue when all around it you see the very same shit which ruled the empire before he came along? It just doesn't make any sense, you know! It's absurd! It's kind of like that polished and cherished Soviet monument surrounded by big banks and the US embassy here in Budapest (although that's a world war monument, I must note).

Even though I regard myself as a Communist (for I want all power over the means of production and distribution handed to the workers), I am still the first to admit that the Soviet Union was really fucked up in many ways and I'm not surprised to see Russians with some brain in their heads being unenthusiastic about the whole story. Though I'm certainly not okay with scapegoating Lenin for the civil war because for that we can only blame the tyranny of tsarism and the decadent stupidity of the bourgeois class (in Russia as much as anywhere else), and I don't think he was anymore of a mass murderer than Winston Churchill, but I know he messed things up as well. I don't idolize him in any way except when it comes to pissing off liberal hypocrites and conservatives. On the other hand, if the hypocrites and conservatives are rallying behind his image, I really don't mind some of his statues being toppled. It's just funny how all those morons following that braindead stalinist zombie Zyuganov (who is also from Oryol, by the way) happen to be so reactionary that they would easily vote for the farthest of the far right if only they lived here in Europe. I think left-wing politics should be about freedom and justice, not about statues and flags and songs...

Now that we're talking about songs, guess what happened to me? No shit: I was kicked from a Communist new year's party for not singing the national anthem in the proper way! Now that's the feat, is it not? Okay, I was drunk and I was also frustrated by a rather uncool atmosphere which might not be very hard for you to imagine since after all we're talking about commies, and I still don't know what's the point of singing our morosely lofty national anthem on such a symbolic moment of debauchery and decadence as the new year's eve, so I sang it in a very impertinent way and I got kicked out. Man, that was the culture shock! Okay, I know it's not a surprise for you since commies are totally nationalistic in Russia, but here in Hungary it's still a feat. Here in Hungary it has always been associated with pro-western liberalism instead of nationalism because ours has always been the most liberal regime in the Warsaw pact. In 1994 the coalition of ex-commies and the liberals happened without any big turmoil on either side, even though these liberals were the harshest critics of Communism only four years earlier. I guess they just figured out that the right wing is even worse. Yeah, and this was the reason why I jumped on the commie bandwagon as a young teenager in the first place! My mom has always been a hard-line liberal and my dad was a hippie with rather strange views about politics I could never understand. I wouldn't have been commie for a second if the thing were not so closely aligned with progressive intellectual liberalism.

But these chaps who kicked me out on new year's eve, they regard this ex-commie party as a bunch of traitors because they really hate the liberals who represent Capitalism, so pretty much like the Russian commies they also choose nationalism as a means to reconnect with the "working masses", even though they are otherwise much more progressive. I never really liked this patriotism thing because Marx himself said the working class has no nation, so I think it's much more logical to team up with liberals against conservatives. I should have left before midnight as I originally planned, but now at least I really learned not to trust commies just because they're commies, even if they are real commies. This was the sublime moment I started to really feel a visceral disgust towards any kind of nostalgic posturing on the left. I already hated these things before the first of January, but now I really truly feel that it's not my style!

So, errr... Yeah, Ukraine! They kick ass! They should be free! This is obviously not about left-wing vs right-wing because there really ain't no such a thing in Ukraine, and it's neither about Europe or even Russia. This is really just about freedom and dignity and justice, without any kind of wise reflections being necessary. I don't care about Western influence or Nazi influence or whatever, and I have a very good reason not to do so: I actually witnessed a wave of riots in my city back in 2006 which was quickly hi-jacked by the right wing since the government was run by liberals and the centre-left. Back then I took a very hard pro-government stance - calling the rioters fascist vermin and things like that, arguing with anyone who didn't like our impertinently idiotic prime minister - and guess what I got as a reward? A landslide victory of the right-wing party led by a vengeful psychopath in the elections of 2010. They managed to gather a two-thirds majority in the house allowing them to re-write the constitution itself - something they are doing on a daily basis since that time. Now they can do almost anything and they do almost everything indeed. It's just like Viktor Yanukovich on a smaller scale, and guess why not on a larger scale? Bingo! That's right: because we're members of the European Union! By the way this arrogant psycho in charge of my country is also called Viktor. A funny coincidence, isn't it?

If Ukraine goes down, we Hungarians will go down as well...