Soviet imagery has been extensively used by Russian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022. Prior to 1991, Ukraine was a member republic of the Soviet Union.
Soviet imagery has been extensively used by Russian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022. Prior to 1991, Ukraine was a member republic of the Soviet Union.
Following the invasion, many Russian tanks were shown flying the old flag of the Soviet Union alongside the pro-war Z military symbol. American political scientist Mark Beissinger told France 24 that the purpose of using these symbols was not necessarily to do with communism, but rather a desire to re-establish "Russian domination over Ukraine", noting that the use of Soviet symbols in most post-Soviet states (with the exception of Russia and Belarus) is often seen as a provocative act. [1]
The American historian Anne Applebaum told The Guardian that "Because modern Russia stands for nothing except corruption, nihilism, and Putin's personal power, they have brought back Soviet flags as well as Lenin statues to symbolise Russian victory". [2] In many occupied towns and cities, including government buildings, Ukrainian flags have been replaced with Victory Banners. These banners, which signified Russia's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, have symbolic meaning, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that the purpose of the Russian invasion was to denazify Ukraine. [3] [4] Many statues of Vladimir Lenin had been removed following the Euromaidan protests of 2014, or under later decommunisation laws passed in 2015 as a result of Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity. However, in Russian-occupied towns, many of these statues have been re-erected. [2] [5] [6] [7]
In addition to symbolism, the Bolshevism of the Russian forces manifests itself in their toponymic policy: the occupiers everywhere "return" their Soviet names to the captured settlements and cities (as well as to those they want to capture). This is officially motivated by the desire to restore historical justice. In fact, as a rule, anti-historical names given by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s are restored instead of either returned historical (pre-revolutionary) names or Ukrainianized names obtained as part of the company for the decommunization of the country in 2014-22. Examples: Artemovsk instead of Bakhmut, Krasnyi (Red) Lyman instead of Lyman, Volodarske instead of Nikolske, Stakhanov instead of Kadiivka. [8] [9] [10] [11]
In April 2022, a video of a Ukrainian woman named Anna Ivanovna [12] greeting Ukrainian soldiers at her home near Dvorichna, whom she thought to be Russian, with a Soviet flag went viral on pro-Russian social media, and featured on Russian state-controlled media. The woman said that she and her husband had "waited, prayed for them, for Putin and all the people". [13] The Ukrainian soldiers gave her food, but went on to mock her and trample on her Soviet flag, after which she said "my parents died for that flag in the Great Patriotic War". [14] This was used by Russian propagandists to prove that the Russian invasion had popular support, in spite of the fact that most Ukrainians – even in Russian-speaking regions – opposed the invasion. [14] In Russia, murals, postcards, street art, billboards, chevrons and stickers depicting the woman have been created. [13] [15] In Russian-controlled Mariupol, a statue of her was unveiled. [14] She has been nicknamed "Grandmother (Russian : бабушка, romanized: babushka) Z", [13] and the "Grandmother with a red flag" by Russians. Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior Russian politician, referred to her as "Grandma Anya". [4]
In May 2022, Anna Ivanovna told the Ukrayinska Pravda that she met the soldiers with a Soviet flag not out of sympathy, but because she felt the need to reconcile with them so that they would not "destroy" the village and Ukraine after her house was shelled, but now feels like a "traitor" due to the way her image has been used by Russia. [12] The next month, the woman spoke to BBC News journalists to which she stated that she did not support the war but claimed that she had (mistakenly) greeted two Russian soldiers and that, at the time, she was "just happy that Russians would come and not fight with us. I was happy that we would unite again." [14] In August 2022, she told BBC News Russian that she still lived near Dvorichna and was "not going to leave anywhere." [16] The promotion of the "Grandmother with a red flag" in Russian state-controlled media almost stopped after it was discovered that Anna Ivanovna did not oppose the Ukrainian authorities. [16]
On 26 August 2022, the Soviet Victory banner was hoisted over the village Pisky, a fortified area just off Donetsk whose capture is strategic for Russia, in their attempt to push Ukrainian forces away from Donbas. [17]
Additionally, many Lenin statues across Ukraine, which had been taken down by the Ukrainians in the preceding years, were re-erected by the Russians in the Russian-controlled areas. [18] [19] [20] [21]
In order to counter Soviet propaganda used by the Russians, the Ukrainian authorities have used anti-Soviet propaganda and used anti-Soviet initiatives, such as the removal of the USSR emblem from the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, which was replaced by the Ukrainian coat of arms. [22] [23]
The State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or simply the Soviet flag, was a red banner with two communist symbols displayed in the canton: a gold hammer and sickle topped off by a red five-point star bordered in gold. The flag's design and symbolism are derived from several sources, but emerged during the Russian Revolution. It has also come to serve as the standard symbol representing communism as a whole, recognized as such in international circles, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Soviet-era statues are statuary art that figured prominently in the art of the Soviet Union. Typically made in the style of Socialist Realism, they frequently depicted significant state and party leaders, such as Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin.
The Soviet War Memorial is a war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 7,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It opened four years after the end of World War II in Europe, on 8 May 1949. The Memorial served as the central war memorial of East Germany. Locally it is also nicknamed the Memorial to Rapists or the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist, with references to mass rapes committed by Soviet occupation troops. There have been discussions over demolition of the monument, like other Soviet propaganda monuments, with renewed discussion following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Muzeon Park of Arts is a park outside the Krymsky Val building in Moscow shared by the modern-art division of the Tretyakov Gallery and the Central House of Artists. It is located between the Park Kultury and the Oktyabrskaya underground stations. The largest open-air sculpture museum in Russia, it has over 1,000 artworks currently in its collection.
Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky was a Ukrainian Soviet politician and Old Bolshevik. He participated in signing the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Petrovsky was Communist Party leader in Ukraine until 1938, and one of the officials responsible for implementing Stalin's policy of collectivization.
Mother Ukraine is a monumental Soviet-era statue in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. The sculpture is a part of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. In 2023, the Soviet heraldry was removed from the monument's shield and replaced with Ukraine's coat of arms, the tryzub.
Decommunization in former communist states is the process of purging former communist high officials and eliminating communist symbols.
The Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People is a monument in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. It was opened on 7 November 1982, amidst the celebration of the 1,500th Anniversary of Kyiv, to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the USSR and the "reunification of Ukraine with Russia in 1654".
Zviahel is a city in Zhytomyr Oblast, northern Ukraine. The city serves as the administrative center of Zviahel Raion (district). Population: 55,086.
The Order of Lenin, was an award named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. It was established by the Central Executive Committee on 6 April 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. The order was awarded to:
The social phenomenon of nostalgia for the era of the Soviet Union, can include its politics, its society, its culture and cultural artifacts, its superpower status, or simply its aesthetics.
Decommunization in Ukraine started during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and expanded afterwards. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity and beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Ukrainian government approved laws that banned communist symbols, as well as symbols of Nazism as ideologies deemed to be totalitarian. Along with derussification in Ukraine, it is one of the two main components of decolonization in Ukraine.
The demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine started during the fall of the Soviet Union and continued to a small extent throughout the 1990s, mostly in some western Ukrainian towns, though by 2013 most Lenin statues in Ukraine remained standing. During Euromaidan in 2013–2014, the destruction of statues of Lenin become a widespread phenomenon and became popularly known in Ukraine as Leninopad, a pun literally translated as "Leninfall", with the coinage of "-пад" being akin to English words suffixed with "fall" as in "waterfall", "snowfall", etc.
Communist symbols have been banned, in part or in whole, by a number of the world's countries. As part of a broader process of decommunization, these bans have mostly been proposed or implemented in countries that belonged to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, including some post-Soviet states. In some countries, the bans also extend to prohibit the propagation of communism in any form, with varying punishments applied to violators. Though the bans imposed by these countries nominally target the communist ideology, they may be accompanied by popular anti-leftist sentiment and therefore a de facto ban on all leftist philosophies, such as socialism, while not explicitly passing legislation to ban them.
As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have spread disinformation in an information war. Much of the news about military propaganda during Russia's invasion of Ukraine focused on Russian disinformation. Ukrainian media and politicians have also been accused of using propaganda and deception, although such efforts have been compared to the Russian disinformation campaign as more limited. Both Russia and Ukraine exaggerate the losses they claim to have inflicted on each other.
Hero City of Ukraine is a Ukrainian honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was awarded to ten cities in March 2022, in addition to four already-named Hero Cities of the Soviet Union. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the distinction of Hero of Ukraine awarded to individuals.
De-Leninization is political reform aimed at refuting Leninist and Marxist–Leninist ideology, ending the personality cult of Vladimir Lenin, removing images and toppling statues of Lenin, renaming places and buildings, dismantling the Lenin Mausoleum currently in Red Square, Moscow, and burying his mummified corpse.
