Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 1 – Less than three weeks after the cadet corps erected a bust of Baron Wrangel, the last White Russian leader in European Russia, KPRF deputies in the local council, declaring that its presence represented an insult to Russia, have succeeded in having it taken down.
But the communist-backed action, instead of calming the situation by removing an irritant, has only exacerbated tensions between those who see the anti-Bolshevik movement as a defense of the Russian Empire and those who insist that Russians today must support the Soviet side in the Russian civil war (ria.ru/20 231 130/pamyatnik-1 912 747 451.html).
Now, the conflict about this small statue in Rostov has gone country-wide, with the divisions that it reflects further compromising Vladimir Putin’s effort to promote a “single stream” vision of Russian history (nemoskva.net/2023/11/29/kommunisty-pobedili-vrangelyav-rostove-na-donu-demontirovali-pamyatnik-odnomu-iz-glavnyh-rukovoditelej-belogvardejskogo-dvizheniya-v-gody-grazhdanskoj-vojny/ and rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=117533).
For background on this debate, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/some-russians-still-deeply-divided-by.html.
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