GPS | Belarus: Vladimir Lenin Monument on Independence Square in Minsk

GPS| EUROPE:  Minsk was totally destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in classical social realist style by the Soviets after the war.  With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, this statue of Vladimir Lenin still stands proudly in front of the House of Government in central Minsk.  This statue is both a metaphor and scultpural proof, we are told, that Belarus’s state institutions, including the arts, remain frozen in the Soviet past.  Do you agree with this view of the Lenin statue as a symbol? Or are we still stuck and mired in post-Cold War ideological thinking?

  • Soviet legacy cast in stone (rt.com)
  • “Stairway to Lenin” (keatho.wordpress.com)
  • Kyrgyzstan pulls down its Statue of Liberty (telegraph.co.uk)
  • Belarus nuke rebuke over US sanctions (rt.com)
  • Belarus’ Cardinal Swiatek, gulag survivor, dies (onecatholicnews.wordpress.com)
  • Belarus’ Cardinal Swiatek, gulag survivor, dies (catholicnewsagency.com)
  • Getting to Minsk (gadling.com)
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