Renaming Moscow’s Europe Square Eurasian Prompts Russians to Joke that Rurik Came Not from Scandinavia but from North Korea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Many of the steps the Putin regime takes are tragicomic, containing as they do elements worthy of laughter and others deserving tears, Leonid Gozman says. The regime’s decision to rename Moscow’s Europe Square Eurasian but not to change the name of the Eurasian shopping center or the Kyiv railroad station on it, at least not yet, is one of them.

            The Russian opposition politician now living abroad says that such inconsistency is endemic to the Putin regime which claims to be conservative but in fact is destructive of the past as well as the present but in ways that provoke laughter as well as tears (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/07/26/pokhititeli-ploshchadi-evropy).

            While most commentaries about the name change have focused on its tragic significance, Gozman calls attention to the fact that this decision has already sparked “a mass of jokes.” He cites two in particular. According to one, Rurik, the traditional founder of the Russian state, it suggests, came not from the European north.

            And according to the other, the new name will require Russians to learn that “the Tatars defended Rus from aggression emanating from Europe.” Such jokes, he continues, show that Russians know they are Europeans whatever Putin says and that he is fighting an uphill battle in trying to insist otherwise, one that he and his successors will inevitably lose.