Putin’s Biker Buddy Calls for Putting Soviet Star on Russia’s Coat of Arms

Paul Goble

`           Staunton, November 29 – Aleksander “the Surgeon” Zaldostanov, the leader of the Night Wolves biker club and a friend of Vladimir Putin, has called on the Kremlin leader to insert into Russia’s coat of arms the Soviet star and sheaves of wheat in order to “strengthen the continuity” between the Russian Federation and Soviet and Imperial Russia.

                The biker told Russian Television that he has long considered that the country must stress its continuity in its heraldic symbols and now thinks that for the realization of that goal, “the political will of the president is sufficient” (russian.rt.com/russia/article/336824-hirurg-putin-zamena-gerba).

            His plan, which he said had been developed by his Night Wolves bikers would have the two-headed eagle illuminated by the sun’s rays and surrounded by sheaves of wheat, much as the Soviet coat of arms did and that it would be topped by a five-pointed star as a symbol of Russia’s victory in the Great Patriotic War.

            “New times require new symbols,” the biker continued, and “the unification on the coat of arms of tsarist and Soviet symbols is a symbolic rethinking of ‘the Crimean consensus.”  The current one stresses the links to the Russian Empire, “but we must also show that we spring from the USSR” and its triumphs, like Gagarin’s flight, the Soviet army and the victory in 1945.

            “After Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin returned Russia its pearl, Crimea, a feeling of pride also returned to Russians. We remembered that yes, we are a great people … Let the liberals, the hirelings of the CIA, and the representatives of national orangism scream that all this is a return to the Soviet Union.”

            “Call it what you like. We are bringing back the Motherland,” the biker declared.

            As Russian TV pointed out, there was a great deal of controversy about the Russian coat of arms in the 1990s, an indication of how important this symbol is for Russians and others.  But the best indication of just what it means is that the Moscow station reported that among the most enthusiastic backers of the Biker’s idea is the leader of the Communists of Russia.

            The channel doesn’t draw the obvious conclusion from that, but in reality, no more needs to be said.