Article by: Paul Goble
Calls across the United States to take down statues honoring figures of the past who abused ethnic minorities have now come to Alaska, where an initiative group in Sitka is seeking the removal or demolition of a statue to Aleksandr Baranov, the ruler of Russian settlements in North America at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.
Not surprisingly, some Russians are outraged, have denounced such plans as part of “a war against the Russian past,” and are demanding that the Russian government intervene to signal their displeasure even if it is not in a position to block this step.
A statue of Baranov has been standing in Sitka, Alaska’s capital, since 1989; but representatives of the Tlingit native peoples say it must be removed from its prominent location because of his racist policies. Not all residents want to see that happen, and city officials are seeking a compromise, including possibly retaining the statue but erecting a statue to the Tlingit.
The statue of Baranov remains in place, and no decision has yet been taken to do anything to it. But even the suggestion that an American city might remove a statue to a Russian has been enough to spark anger among officials and commentators in Moscow. They want their government to take actions to defend the monument.
“We need to talk about this because we are talking about our history and our heroes,”
Andrey Klimov, head of the Federation Council’s foreign relations committee. He said that taking down statues in this way represented
“a form of barbaric insanity … We cannot not take note of this,” and the Russian embassy in Washington must speak out.
Valery Voronov and Natalya Makarov entitle their article about the discussions in Alaska and the Russian reaction to them, “Alaska has Begun a War with the Russian Past”. They cite Klimov but also and more extensively Moscow commentator Vladimir Solovyev.
The television host says that if the Americans won’t respect monuments to Russian heroes, perhaps Moscow should seek to have these statues moved to somewhere in the Russian Federation. He added that such attacks on statues of figures from the past in the United States was not so much about politics as about the kind of mental illnesses Freud talked about.
“This isn’t even leftwing radicalism,” he says, “but about issues” the founder of psychoanalysis talked about. “This is an attempt of fighting the past, the denial of one’s own past because it is so heavy. This is a great big Oedipus complex,” the result of the failure of Americans to know and respect their own history.
(c) Euromaidanpress
“This is an attempt of fighting the past, the denial of one’s own past because it is so heavy. This is a great big Oedipus complex,”
Russia know all about that. Just mention Stalin-Hitler cooperation to divide Europe. Toss the garbage into the sea and let them whine.
It would have been priceless to see this Moskali’s face when he found out the territory he was governing got sold to those he oppressed, just so the Kremlinals could continue their war (what else, right?) against the Tartars.
I’m with you Foccusser, throw it in the sea but make sure it is in U.S. territorial waters so they can’t touch it. What are they going to do? Tear down monuments to Reagan in Moskovia?…. Oh, wait…..;)))
He never got the chance, he died in 1819, long before the US bought Alaska from the Moskali.
I should have known you or Facts would set me straight, lol, I stand corrected :))
I realize that the statue is of a Ruskie. But, he has little to do with today’s mafia land. I think it should remain where it is.
This toppling statues thing and flag-burning is getting way out of hand.
We are not barbaric monkeys like the Nazis, communists and ISIS and etc.. We have come a long way in history. True, things today are far from being ideal but we no longer kill Indians, hold African slaves or any other such things that our forefathers found normal. To topple statues and to change or burn flags is not an answer. It never can be. We cannot erase history. And, those men and women lived in another time. They were simply not as advanced in their thinking about human rights as we are. Throwing a statue into the sea will not make a wrong into a right. Perhaps we can view the statues of those individuals, who were not exactly role models of equality, as a reminder of an age gone by when such concepts had not yet fruited. Besides that, those people had also done some good, for one side or the other.
Toppling statues, burning flags, changing flags for ideological purposes … we had such events before in history and they didn’t end well. The Nazis and communists enjoyed this as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan, and so did other cretins. What will come next? Book burning? Film burning? Sending people into a gulag or concentration camp because they have a different political view? Or, because they are white?
This guy tried to wipe out the local Indian population, because they didn’t want Russians on their land. So the comparison between Russia then, and Russia now, is very real. The locals had years to destroy this statue, so the timing of this is strange to say the least.
Juneau is the capital of Alaska, not Sitka. Perhaps it was the colonial capital, however.