Trade in Symbols Retro goods in demand on the symbols market

Whatever debate is underway about the changes that have taken place in Ukrainian society over the past debate, the fact remains that business on the symbols market is up and about, with the assortment diversifying and prices declining. One can buy any symbol cheap, except perhaps the ever prestigious symbols of the righteous (currently better known as comfortable) lifestyle.

Pushing through the dense rows of symbols where the main battle among the symbol makers is taking place, we cannot fail to notice an outwardly strange phenomenon. Communist symbols, considered sacral only a couple of decades back and later destroyed with such enthusiasm, appear to be increasing in market demand. Is this nostalgia, some manifestation of subconscious craving, or perhaps yet more proof that the Communists knew how to organize a free dispensation of and trade in symbols? Or could it be evidence that their ideas really are immortal?

The system of symbols with which the 1917 Revolution was perceived by the masses was quite confusing at first. Relying on the existing religious tradition, most of the population received the Revolution as Red Easter; people would embrace and kiss each other, saying that Christ is risen. Clergymen supporting the Bolshevik coup placed little red flags in front of the icons, while monks staged revolutionary rallies and put forward their revolutionary demands. Despite the ideological chaos, no one doubted the need to rename streets and warships, so that the battleship Prince Potemkin of Tauris became Panteleimon, cruiser Ochakov was now the Kagul, Tsesarevich became Citizen, Emperor Alexander was renamed Liberty, Emperor Nicholas I turned into Democracy, Empress Catherine II was renamed Free Russia, etc. Likewise old monuments were subject to destruction, as the statutes of tsars were torn down in almost every city. On the first days of March in Kyiv, the monument to Pёtr Stolypin was dismantled when celebrating one of the new holidays of freedom, but not before a loop resembling a necktie was thrown round his neck. The renaming and destroying campaign did not last long, however, as the Communists quickly learned the wealth of symbols of the February Revolution, and this became a guarantee of their triumph.

Among the first decrees of the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was Lenin’s message to “prepare hundreds of inscriptions (revolutionary and Socialist, to be sure) on the walls of all public buildings,” “install busts, even if temporary, of various famous revolutionaries,” “organize supervision of all public events,” register such events and the officials concerned, and erect monuments (read: idols) to outstanding personalities, starting with Marx and Engels. The Communists tried to turn even the most pragmatic action into a sacral gesture. Consider how, for example, collecting garbage and lugging a log through Moscow streets on April 12-13, 1919, was made into a miracle play, covered by film cameras, because the procession of workers from the Moskva-Sortirovochnaya Depot was led by the “leader of the world proletariat” Vladimir Lenin (the event would go down into Soviet history as the first Communist subbotnik [collectively meaning voluntary unpaid work on days off, originally especially on Saturdays], largely forming the image- bearing language of the revolution; the world being metaphorically represented by a giant “garbage heap of history” along with parasites on top, ranging from all kinds of kings and tsars to intellectuals, all this subject to a series of coordinated sanitary and epidemiological measures to be carried out by the proletariat). When celebrating May 1, 1920, in Leningrad, the organizers skillfully combined the utilitarian and symbolic aspects, directing the crowd of 10,000 to dismantle the fence of the Winter Palace.

Over the years Soviet authorities put together a sizable Red calendar; in 1918-19 alone, May 1 festivities were complemented by Bloody Sunday, Day of the Paris Commune, Red Army Day, July Days Remembrance, and, of course, the anniversary of Great October. Later, the state instituted labor watches, Lenin lessons, and moral premiums; there were the ceremonies of presenting papers and keys to new apartments, the first salary, Soviet passport, registration of marriage and childbirth, etc., and professional holidays. At first, the celebrations came down to processions with brass bands blasting away revolutionary songs and marches, then a symbolic anvil was installed in the Field of the Martyrs of the Revolution in Leningrad, on May 1, 1920. The proletarians at the head of marching columns took turns approaching it, swinging their hammers, and hitting the anvil as hard as they could (a symbolic oath of allegiance). Finally, in 1920, the first successors of the medieval itinerant shows appeared in the form of streetcar theaters, shortly followed by hundreds of theatrical cars and carts.

Gradually, beginning in 1918, when revolution became very fashionable, the first portraits of Lenin appeared, first as badges and after the world proletariat leader died and was embalmed (turned into what Panchenko described as the eighth wonder of the world), an image of the Communist deity started being put together by bits and pieces, shortly to emerge on the mystery-play arena. Decades later, the standards of Communist mythology were somewhat diversified, but those were but variations on the old theme. “Communist propaganda has shown spectacular attainments by using the hero cult,” wrote Tsvetan Todorov. “In the first place, it embraces all who sacrificed their lives for the regime and whose names, by way of posthumous compensation, were bestowed on cities, streets, and schools. Then there are all those the regime wanted to praise. In the USSR, they can be divided into two groups: Heroes of the Soviet Union, conferred the title for military or political merits, and Heroes of Socialist Labor, meaning people that work hard to fulfill their quotas. And there is the dead and mummified head of state, worshipped in millions of images, lauded by songs, poems, and novels. This hero cult is practiced at school, at one’s place of work, in all public places.”

Lenin’s image started being sacralized in the early 1920s. The sacralization extended not only to political leaders, but also to their retinues. Volodymyr Sosiura wrote, “I saw the real Cheka men through the sacred image of Dzerzhinsky. In writing the poem GPU, my hand was guided by my belief in our state security authorities, and by my love of them.”

In several decades, after sowing seeds of the new mentality, the Communists grew a thick forest of symbols which is still there, in an undisturbed national consciousness. Ten years ago, it seemed so easy, just a couple of symbolic acts like tearing down several monuments, returning the original names of streets, changing signboards, etc. In reality, it all turned out far more complicated. Small wonder: there is always somebody to step in and fill the void.

That which the city will hold sacred or not and assert it as lawful, will be such for that city, wrote Plato. For the Soviet cities such sacred symbols were, as a rule, things supposedly immortal. The Central Executive Committee of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR issued a decree On the Protection of the Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms, and on Cooperation and the Strengthening of Public (Socialist) Property,” dated August 7, 1932 (later popularly known as the wheat-ear law), had it, in part, “The CEC and the CPC of the Soviet Union consider that public (state, collective farm, and cooperative) property is the foundation of the Soviet system and is sacred.” Chapter X, “The Foundations of the Rights and Duties of the Citizenry,” of Stalin’s 1936 Constitution of the USSR sets forth as sacred “socialist ownership” (Article 131) and “protection of the Fatherland” (Article 133). The Great Helmsman’s colleague Adolf Hitler also propagated basic symbols. The fact that a given state exists, he wrote, is enough to consider this state sacred and inviolable; he further extolled the “sacred right to speak the native language,” the “sacred right of the people,” the “sacred rights of man,” the “sacred rights of democracy,” the “sacred [native] land,” the “sacred national flag,” and so on. The most favored slogans of all times remain Democracy, Fraternity, Equality, Liberty that has served as a set of pseudonyms of real power. Paul Rikoer wrote that “security,” “prosperity,” “freedom,” “justice,” and “equality” are nothing but words feeding debate on what we are supposed to view as the intentions of a “good government.” These emblematic terms have one emotional concept reaching above their strict meaning. That is why they are so easily manipulated and made into propaganda weapons to a greater extent than arguments in a rational discussion.

This is also precisely why we should not worry about cheap wholesale or retail, or a charitable dispensation of any symbols; we can go and buy them anywhere today. All this concerns only the producers, it is just the inner struggle among those making symbols and whose sanctity we do not believe in, because we are accustomed to living under our weather conditions. We just don’t buy any of that, and hopefully, will remain that way. Even less will we ever feel like buying any old symbols at all.