House of Paine

my man iz back

 

comrade Dzerzhinsky 

" a man of polish dash
and soviet sweep "

the peerless 
"Iron Felix" 

  this week
       suddenly 
and without much fanfare 
     reappeared 
      after years in remotest exile
             to a place of honor
                        right 
               in the very center of  Moscow 
                         




==========================
 


"MOSCOW — He was the founder 
of the secret police 
at a time when the word police 
meant terror"

"... as the Soviet Union was collapsing 
in 1991
 the bronze statue 
of Felix Dzerzhinsky 
that towered for years
 outside KGB headquarters
 was among the first
 Soviet relics to go"

"hauled off to a statue garden."

  
" Without fanfare or advance notice
 the Cheka founder's stern bronze visage
 was quietly re-erected Tuesday morning 
at the headquarters 
of the Interior Ministry"

"It was not the huge
 full-body statue 
that once stood in nearby Lubyanka Square
 to be sure; it was a bust"

For much of the last decade, Russia has seen the dark side of the Soviet past — the stifling political climate, the gulag camps, the lines at the food shops — fade into memory amid the failed promises of a market economy. 





"Human rights groups 
 who in 2002 gathered
 more than 100,000 signatures 
opposed to a proposal
 to resurrect the original
 16-ton statue 
that stood in Lubyanka Square
 are appealing to the government 
to remove the bust"

"In their appeals
 they point to the nature 
of 
the Extraordinary Commission
 for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage
 or Cheka
 founded under Dzerzhinsky in 1917
 which the following year launched 
the campaign of arrests 
and executions known as the Red Terror"




"For a majority of the population he remains a hero 
with a 
'cool head, warm heart and clean hands,' 
Dzerzhinsky's own recipe for a KGB man"



"When advocating 
the return of the Dzerzhinsky statue
 three years ago
 Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov noted 
that the worst abuses 
of the secret police
 followed the Cheka founder's death in 1926"

 

 "If we put on the scales
 all the things this man had done
 the good will prevail," 


------- and still
the people cry with one voice

"no no this  bust
       is not enough

bring us the full monty

bring us  the 16 tonner "---------------

---------------------------------

proposed 
 secular humanist moral:

  old golems never stay put

       so the fuck with
 shipping em
     to a distant garden 
            melt the bastards  down 
                and throw away 
                   the  molds