VDNKh

Today I went on another of my solitary walking tours of Moscow to get some exercise and allow some thoughts to brew. I’ve begun reading my second work by Solzhenitsyn- “The Gulag Archipelago”- and already I sense the tremendous impact it will have in the formulation of my political compass. You see, Solzhenitsyn is the foremost chronicler of the abuses in the GULAG labor camps, and he describes the abuse with such harrowing specificity as to churn up rabid indignation in the most imperturbable and morally relativist of individuals. So you can just imagine my reaction!
Walking around the VDNK (ВДНХ) today I was filled by a desire to desecrate the “temples of the proletariat” built to the glory of a bastardized ideology that was the driving force behind the unspeakable treatment of millions at the hands of the bastards who became so unthinkingly consumed by it!
Getting ahead of myself. The VDNK was a permanent exhibition center for each of the Soviet Socialist Republics (the SSR in USSR) built in 1939 under papa Stalin. In the enormous outdoor complex are magnificent exhibition halls, built like temples, where cultural displays from each of the republics were maintained. Each building has its own unique architectural design but is covered with communist iconography that not-so-subtly suggests the subordinate status of regional culture to global worker’s solidarity.
Today, the cultural exhibits are long gone, replaced with little vendor stalls like the ones we have outside of my apartment building. Inside the Belorussian building there was a purveyor of toothpaste, blow-dryers, and floor-mats. Each of the buildings is full of vendors hawking everything from fancy televisions and high-grade video cameras, to prop swords, hookahs, cookware, and faux-fur.
Strange to see the hand-drawn signs and splintered plywood “storefronts” underneath the intricate plaster medallions on the ceiling. Stepping through the threshold framed by magnificent marble columns and archways and into the hectic bazaar feels much like going to a flea market in the Lincoln Memorial. Really, imagine all of the monuments in Washington D.C. being overtaken by the peddlers in New York’s Chinatown. Counterfeit watches on sale at the WWII memorial; food stands blocking the names on the Vietnam memorial; a big banner advertisement hanging on the Washington monument.
Although initially taken aback by this, it dawned on me that there could be no greater triumph of the noble forces of liberalism over the petulant rottenness that inspired the construction of these halls! Sure, the booths are a bit tacky and out of place, but can you imagine the look on Stalin’s face if he knew that his grand monument to communist unity was being used in this manner? I can think of no greater desecration of his vision. Sure, Khrushchev did a number on Stalin’s reputation when he dismantled the cult of personality, but nothing like this. It makes you want to go stomp on the old bastard’s grave near the Kremlin and joyfully scream:

“You lose, you’ve lost! Everything that you thought good has been dismantled; your memory has been defecated upon by history; you are an object of contempt! Good riddance!”