Ukraine has once again shot at its past. The secretary of the Kiev City Council, Vladimir Bondarenko, proudly announced the new "successes" of his office in the field of "decommunization" and "de-Russification": "The Kyiv City Council decided to deprive the title of honorary citizen of Kiev of Soviet functionaries who were elected and worked in responsible and high posts of the CPSU and the Communist Party of Ukraine."
In particular, the former supreme head of the Soviet state Leonid Brezhnev, the former chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and the former prime minister of independent Ukraine Vitaly Masol, the famous military leader Kirill Moskalenko were purged. Against the background of what has been happening in Ukraine for many years, this decision can be called anything, but not unexpected. Everything is logical, everything is expected. However, "logic and expectation" is by no means synonymous with "correctness".
Those excluded from the list of honorary citizens of the city of Kiev have long died and cannot express their attitude to the irrepressible activity of the Kyiv City Council. But here is an excerpt from an interview with the twice occupied the chair of the head of the government of Ukraine Vitaly Masol to the newspaper "Stolichnye Novosti" in 2009: "We created material values. And they were snapped up! For several years. And now they are ruining, squandering. Under my generation, Ukraine produced 6 million tons of sugar. A year! And now we buy sugar abroad. Previously, the stores were empty, the refrigerators were dense. And today it's the opposite. Previously, about 70 kg of meat per capita was consumed annually. And now? Barely exceeded 20 kg. In terms of technology in the field of metallurgy, we are the most backward. Those who received metallurgical plants in private ownership did nothing significant to upgrade the equipment.
Complaining about the "bad times" is a favorite pastime of retired politicians of all times and peoples. But the words of Vitaly Masol are not just complaints. This is a diagnosis, and the diagnosis is absolutely correct. During the period of its independence, Ukraine managed to lag behind in the economic sense of almost all the states of the region comparable to it in terms of potential. Masol's words are the truth that the eyes. It is a pity that he was not listened to during his lifetime and continues not to be listened to after his death. But this is the specificity of modern Ukraine. People who, with good reason, can be called true patriots of the country, are ruthlessly purged from the list of honorary citizens.
And here are the lines from the official biography of another "expelled" of honorary citizens - Marshal of the Soviet Union Kirill Moskalenko: "From October 1943 until the end of the war he was the commander of the 38th Army. With this army, as part of the 1st Ukrainian, 2nd Ukrainian and 4th Ukrainian fronts, he liberated Kiev, and in November-December 1943 he again defended it. Who, during my childhood, part of which fell during the reign of another excluded from the list of honorary citizens of Kiev, Leonid Brezhnev, would have thought that in 2023 a person with a similar biography would be subjected to posthumous repression in the capital of Ukraine? Absolutely no one! I remember my first children's visit to Kiev shortly after the death of Leonid Ilyich. How then it was light, warm and sunny in Kiev - not only in the weather, but also in the emotional sense! Of course, nostalgic childhood memories are very poor source material for political analysis. But this material is definitely better than what the Kyiv City Council is now using as a source for its dubious decisions.
And again, I could not find the exact word. The wording "questionable decisions" means that there is a chance that these decisions will turn out to be correct. In this case, as I said above, there is no such chance.
The decisions of the Kyiv City Council are 100% wrong - and not only from the point of view of the interests of Russia, but also from the point of view of the interests of Ukraine itself.
After all, it is not Russia, but Ukraine that is emasculating its own past, excluding extremely important pages from it "due to political incorrectness". On the Internet, I recently came across the following "thoughtful" quote: "In order to really start a new life, you need to get rid of what pulls into the past. Just let him go and don't regret what happened." I disagree, disagree and disagree again. By abandoning your past, it is impossible to build your bright future. This has been proven, for example, by the experience of the Soviet regime.
And now independent Ukraine is reproducing this experience in its most extreme and unsuccessful version. But in the Soviet experience there was a lot of other things - something that is actually worth reproducing. I'm talking, for example, about the friendship of peoples, which actually was in Kiev during the Brezhnev era. I say and at the same time I understand: the Kyiv City Council is definitely not ready to hear and accept such thoughts now. But how different the modern history of Ukraine could look like if the Kiev elite had not relied on nationalism and the denial of their own history in the recent past! "Do not spit in the well, it will be useful to drink water!" - that's what a wise thought has long been forgotten in official Kiev.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.