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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert
2 February, 1999 - 00:00

Paradoxically, knowledge of history and historical knowledge are not
the same. Today's Ukrainian boys and girls know very little, if anything,
about all those "founders," especially compared to those of us taught to
consider ourselves as "Lenin's grandchildren." Considering this from the
standpoint of historical knowledge, contemporary adults' pragmatic knowledge
and the funny mess in younger heads are yet another guarantee that our
past will remain just another chilling fairy tale for our children. God
grant it have a happy ending.

Leonid, age 8:

 "Lenin is a writer. He has written lots of books with dark blue
covers. My granddad has them all in his bookcase."

Hanna, 9:

"Vladimir Lenin lies in a glass coffin in Red Square. It is far away
from here. You have to spend the night on the train to Moscow. He is very
old. You can't run around the Mausoleum or talk aloud. There are guards
all over the place. They stand watch and protect him, so no one steals
him."

Taras, 10:

"He is a leader! He made the revolution and killed the tsar. Lenin
is also very selfish. He closed down all the churches and said people could
not pray. Karl Marx is a factory in Kyiv. They make cakes and candies there."

Slavko, 12:

"Grandma told me. There was a war a very long time ago. The Germans
came to her village and two soldiers stayed in her house. The name of one
was Karl and the other was Marx. Granddad went to the forest to join the
partisans. The Nazis couldn't catch them."

Oksana, 15:

"Vladimir Illich Ulianov (Lenin) was the leader and the first head
of our state. In October 1917, a revolution took place. The Bolsheviks
came to power and staged a Red terror. They did it helped by Germany and
its money. Tsarist Russia was gripped by a political and economic crisis
at the time. People were dissatisfied with the regime, and this helped
Lenin and his supporters establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

"Karl Marx and Frederic Engels are the authors of a classical political
and economic doctrine. They wrote a program, The Communist Manifesto."

Denys, 16:

 "Karl Marx is considered the founder of Marxism. He insisted
that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class which has nothing
to lose but its chains. This concept was very popular in the second half
of the nineteenth century and had many followers. Marx wrote several scholarly
works. The most fundamental is Das Kapital. A considerable part of it has
become obsolete. But his theory of surplus value, primacy of economic relationships
over political factors, and its theory of social progress remain valid."

Olha, 15:

 "Vladimir Lenin is the leader of the world proletariat and Communists.
His ideas led our country down the blind alley. Ukraine became independent
seven years ago. We must not return to the old system. There are old people
in our Parliament, so they are for Communism. The younger generation wants
freedom.

"There was a revolution in October 1917. The tsar and his whole family
were killed. A terrible sin was committed, and we are still paying for
it. I think that one can prove anything by using weapons, because from
a drop of blood flows an ocean of suffering and woe."

By Tetiana POLISHCHUK, The Day



 
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