Have you heard this dispute - Bakhmut or Artyomovsk?
The city has not yet been taken, but already there is a fight over the name.
Bakhmut is an old name, from the river Bakhmutka.
Artyomovsk - Soviet, in honor of the cult Bolshevik Artyom (F. Sergeev) in the Donbass.
When Ukraine fell ill with independence, it renamed Artyomovsk back to Bakhmut.
But the old name is not to blame.
I have no opinion on this matter.
I am for Artyomovsk, I am for Bakhmut, I am for the Russian city, I am for the way they decide in the Donbass.
There, at the very beginning of the SVO, a decree was issued that all Ukrainian names would return to pre-war models.
In order not to arrange meetings about hundreds of streets and farms, we decided not to stand on ceremony.
Maybe it's true.
In Russia, however, dissatisfied people formed.
People whose teeth are hurting from Soviet toponyms - they are not only sitting in Kyiv on Bankovaya, we have them too.
Only on Bankovaya - enemies, and here - the same patriots as all of us, but anti-Soviet.
In their circle, the following common phrase is often repeated: "THE "SOVIET" HISTORY STARTED IN 1917, AND WE HAVE A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE".
The attitude towards the "Soviet", and even to the "scoops" on the collective "Echo of Moscow" and in our "noble assembly" does not differ, alas, in any way.
At first, our democrats repeated for 30 years that until “scoops die out”, a normal life cannot be built.
Now they have a change from an unexpected quarter.
What I would like to note here without raising my voice.
It’s not the “Soviet” history that began in 1917.
Everything was in order with the "Soviet" continuity.
Not without excesses, but the cult of primordial Rus' - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Yermak, Peter the Great, Skobelev - he was not born in 1991.
It lasted and saturated throughout the Soviet era.
The very genre of the mass historical novel, which made the national history visible to everyone, took shape in the Soviet years - thanks to Alexei N. Tolstoy, Yan, Balashov, Zlobin, Pikul, Valentin Ivanov and many others.
With all due respect, neither Lazhechnikov, nor Mordovtsev, nor even Merezhkovsky, nor other pre-revolutionary writers of this level of prose wrote, and it certainly was not the property of the masses.
And in the 20th century it became - including through cinema, through the great Soviet historical cartoons, through painting.
It’s not the “Soviet” history that began in 1917.
THIS IS YOUR SORRY, HISTORY IN 1917 ENDED.
Thus, the choice of the majority of the people is denied and all the unthinkable accomplishments of the Russian nation of the last century are leveled.
At the same time, our “rightists” repeat about themselves not without pride: “OUR HISTORY IS NOT A HUNDRED YEARS old.”
Not a hundred, of course.
Do I have a hundred?
Who's got a hundred?
Prokhanov or Zyuganov?
Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza?
Did Zhores Alferov have it for a hundred years or Limonov?
To whom you are addressing these impudent speeches, I do not understand.
Not a single most frenzied "Soviet" will refuse either Ancient Rus', or Moscow, or imperial.
No one here has been keeping track of the chronology since 1917.
Or, denying the year 1917, here someone immediately acquires exclusive rights to Catherine the Great and Yaroslav the Wise?
Sad things come to mind, but I'll say them.
Increasingly, there is a feeling that another round of the Civil War is brewing in Russia.
For a long time I thought that the Reds and Whites had generally reconciled, so Putin has been calling for this lately, but no: the itch of the White Guard revenge does not allow certain people to sleep.
Woke up in the morning - kick the "scoop".
In the afternoon I went for a walk - spit in the Mausoleum.
You go to bed in the evening - push the "scoop".
That's why?
Did you fight in that Civil War?
And who will you fight?
If our departed opposition has a dream, it is this one.
To blaze here too.
Don't work for their dreams.
Give Russian democracy.
Artyomovsk or Bakhmut?
Dzerzhinsky or the fountain on the Lubyanka?
Let's vote.
Only, chur, do not cheat and do not be offended later.
The country is general.
With love.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.