The other day, as I was walking through Montreal's central train station, I saw two young men who looked to be around 16 or 17 wearing bright red t-shirts with the letters "CCCP" emblazoned in yellow across their chests. As any hockey fan knows, CCCP is the Russian abbreviation for the former Soviet Union. The t-shirts also featured the infamous hammer and sickle from the former Soviet flag.
I stopped and tried to engage these young gentlemen in conversation. Did they realize what those symbols stood for? Were they aware of the millions who had suffered and died under the fearsome Soviet regime?
Sadly, they were supremely uninterested in what I had to say.
It seems that ex-Soviet iconography is becoming cooler and cooler lately in Quebec, including amongst some groups who have emerged in the context of the so-called "student protests" (even if the vast majority of students are not involved with them). More and more people seem to have forgotten, or more likely never learned, about the crimes committed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and their ideology.
What would I have told those two young men if they had been more open to discussion?
I probably would have started by telling them about the Red Terror, in which hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants -- the two groups supposedly represented by the hammer and sickle -- were murdered by the communist regime during the years immediately following the Russian Revolution.
Then I would have told them about the tens of thousands killed in Soviet concentration camps in the 1920s, not to mention the nearly 700,000 people killed in the Great Purge of the late 1930s.
And I certainly would have told them about the famines of 1921 and 1932-1933 artificially created by the Soviet regime, which caused the deaths of five million and six million people, respectively.
For further information, I would have directed them to The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Originally published in France in 1997, it was written by various European academics -- some of whom hail from the left of center side of the political spectrum, by the way. It estimates that the Soviet Union was responsible for a total of 20 million deaths.
Is this what those two young men think is cool?
The scope of the Soviet regime's atrocities should be widely known among both young and old. The fact that it is not widely known is a sad indictment of our educational systems.
One thing that might help is an organization called Tribute to Liberty, whose goal is to establish a memorial to victims of communism in Ottawa. The project has received approval from the National Capital Commission and is now at the fundraising stage. I just gave them $200 in order to buy two "bricks."
As the organization points out, over 8 million individuals in Canada trace their roots to countries once ruled or still ruled by communists. If a quarter of Canadians have direct, personal links to communism and its victims, perhaps one of them could have a chat with those who proudly wear or display Soviet icons.
And perhaps once this memorial gets built, I can just tell those people to hop on the next train to Ottawa for a little dose of history.
Regardless of one's political orientation, wearing the hammer and sickle is just not cool. Actually, "not cool" is too soft an expression for this kind of intellectual and moral recklessness.
Follow Michel Kelly-Gagnon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/iedm_montreal
The fact that communists in Russia are responsible for millions of deaths doesn't mean there is nothing there worthy of wearing a t-shirt. The soviet era also produced some great hockey teams and athletic accomplishments, significant scientific advances, and produced gains in health and poverty reduction that have been significantly reversed under the current Russian capitalist oligarchy. I don't even need to remind you that a majority of Russians would prefer a return to the Soviet system - http://mondediplo.com/2004/03/11russia .
I say these things not to minimize the terrible crimes of Lenin and Stalin among others, but to point out that the CCCP stands for more than mass murder - in Russia and around the world communism still appeals to people dissatisfied with the status quo. I believe communism has been and always will be a failure in terms of delivering a high standard of living and equality, compared to capitalism with highly progressive taxes and a generous welfare state. Engaging young people wearing CCCP teachers on the economic questions would be more valuable than talking about mass repression and violence.
What about the crimes of the US and Canada, or Britain against its colonies? The Boer War was the first time a state rounded up people into concentration camps, where a significant fraction of residents were killed or died of starvation and disease, yet we honour the empire and that conflict. Also the americans and canada destroyed indian nations across the continent.
If you care so much about history, why not condemn Canada for fighting in the russian revolution as well, and contributing to the millions killed? Yes, we sent troops and helped occupy towns in Russia, something nobody seems to remember at all. We were involved in that terror.
How about the Starvation that the British Empire inflicted on India in the 1899-1900, and again in 1943, and that killed tens of millions (and the British kept exporting grain from India while the people were starving)? How about the famines in Ireland that the British were responsible for that killed millions even when there was no natural shortage of food?
As members of the british empire, our hands are every bit as bloody as the communists, even if we keep it hidden. The idea that you could lecture anyone on historical crimes is laughable. This kind of selective historical indignation is even worse than ignorance.
These youths may not have known the scope of the Purges in the Soviet Regime, but I don't see why wearing the Soviet flag on a shirt is worse than wearing the U.S. flag or the British flag when both of those countries have a history of imperialism, "hammering" (though not quite the same kind as is implied in the title), and starting or supporting tyrannical regimes just as oppressive as that of the Communist Party in Russia.
But I'm not blind to the purpose behind this article either. Rhetoric through association? "Oh it's those ignorant, Communist students again." Not surprising considering the neoliberal nature of the policy recommendations of the IEDM.
Thinking something is cool and not understanding it is stupid, but he knew and did it because he knew making it a crime.
Lets also ban people wearing American flags while we are at it.
If we coutned up how many deaths were caused by American policy and American capitalism around the world, what do you think that number would be? How come it hasn't been done? Think of all the natives, slaves, foreigners, drone attacked civillians, Jewish refugees during WW2 that were sent back to Nazi Germany, Latin American (as well as Asian and African) countries suffering under American-supported dictatorships, deaths caused by American Manifest Destiny (War in Mexico and Canada, Western Expansion), the deposition of the Hawaiian Queen, the Mormon Wars, etc etc etc
Seriously, what do you think that number would be? Would it be inching up to the USSR? And then, we consider that numbers should be turned into percentages of populations. After all, you aren't going to say that the Holocaust is overexposed because only 6 million Jews died (9 million altogether I think is the full number) when you consider what a huge percentage that was of European Jewery.
We haven't even started talking about the French and English.