Thousands and thousands of streets of Russian cities, towns and villages are still named after Lenin and other Communist criminals and mass murderers (not only Russian, moreover). You can only look to the map of any – any! – Russian city, town or village on the Internet to understand that! When propositions to rename them appear, usually they are opposed under the pretext that renaming them is “expensive”.

It is not true; it’s cheap, really. And in addition it is an hypocrisy, because, for example, when some people damaged the big statue of Lenin in St. Petersburg on the square before the Finland train station (remarkably, for the cladding of this square, the stones that were used were from the St. Petersburg Catholic cemetery which was destroyed by the Bolsheviks), this statue was restored “in all its splendor”, using millions of our taxpayers’ money.

On the contrary, when there are even modest attempts to install something glorifying the heroes of the anti-Communist resistance, these attempts meet with hostility. For example, recently there was an attempt to hang a small plaque on the building in which one of the leaders of the White movement — who fought against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War — Admiral Kolchak, lived. This plaque only said that Kolchak was a Russian officer and explorer. There were not even any words about his leadership of the White movement and fight against Bolshevism.

But, anyway, pro-Communist organizations, after many times vandalizing that plaque, went to court, and this plaque was eliminated by the court and authorities’ decision. So, in the maps of Russian cities it is practically impossible to find any streets dedicated to heroes of the anti-Communist resistance or even Tzars and Imperial times personalities, the same with monuments. If there are any, the number is so small that it’s only an exception, confirming a rule.

Similar to the above, an accident happened some years ago in Moscow not far from here. Someone decided to open a restaurant (shashlyk-house) under the name “Anti-Soviet”. The reason was not ideological, it was only a joke, because on the opposite side of the avenue the “Soviet” cafe was situated. Some people, however, also went to court, demanding to eliminate that name, because “it’s offensive” (not the “Soviet” one, but “Anti-Soviet”!). The result, the name “Anti-Soviet” was eliminated, and the man who was the initiator of the lawsuit against the “Anti-Soviet” restaurant, was named by the Moscow mayor, Sobyanin, no less than the official Moscow representative in the Upper House of the Russian parliament (September 13, 2013)!