Every Slave Needs a Ruler
Entertaining ideologies that wouldn’t entertain us
A friend of mine who is from a post-Soviet country informed me about a statue of Stalin that was recently. After the statue was installed, people began laying flowers before it. Likely this was all meant to coincide with the Victory Day celebrations (9th May) over the end of World War Two, but it is important to note that this is not the first time the Putin regime have installed monuments to Stalin.
Not long before this event, another monument dedicated to Stalin was set up in by the Russian communist party. I have seen no comment from either the Communists in the West, nor have any Western news outlets covered this. This matter is quite serious in my opinion, because we would not put up with Germany building a monument to Hitler, so why does something like this fly below the radar? Furthermore, this to me is a display of the connection of the threads yearning for the Soviet legacy and its relationship to the so-called imperialist actions of Putin.
I don’t think these two are unrelated.
Most statues of Stalin that exist in Russia today have been installed under Putin, but I’m always a little surprised when I hear of a new one getting installed. My friend who is always, by comparison, unsurprised by these events, simply said to me:
“Every slave needs a ruler.”
Soviet legacy
The list of guests at the recent Victory Day parade in Moscow included some , including: China, Laos, North Korea, Congo, Cuba, Vietnam, Palestine, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia (among others). None of these nations had any direct involvement with the toppling of Nazi Germany in 1945. But what they do have in common is that they were, at some point in the 20th Century, either established or supported by the Soviet Union.
It’s as if these Victory Day events are more associated with the pining for the legacy of the regime, not the end of World War Two.
In post Soviet countries, the legacy of communism is complex and often difficult to understand as a Westerner. Belorussian author Svetlana Alexievich even wrote: “Only a Soviet can understand another Soviet.”
I am as concerned when I hear about new monuments to Stalin being erected in Russia as I am when I stumble across a Communist Party poster plastered up on my local street. I can’t accept people that have had no exposure to these kinds of authoritarian regimes, and yet there are many Westerners who decide to champion them out of an obscure adoration.
I recall how people were quick to condemn Trump’s ‘golden statue’ video, when in the meantime, actual statues of a dictator with a kill-count in their millions have been built with little fuss.
Paradox of democracy
In our liberal Western democracies, we can go out and write books and articles being critical of our government (I mean, look at the type of stuff on Medium). We can start a band and release political music and plays gigs. We can start a podcast and speak our mind. And if we get banned on places like YouTube, there is always places like Odysee.
There are Communist content creators on the internet that live in Western countries. They show off their collection of memorabilia from the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc or China, wear the insignia and imagery and build book collections of their favorite (and often easy to source) books from people like Marx, Lenin and Mao.
All of this is achievable through a free market and a free society.
They enjoy the freedoms that are offered them in a Western liberal democracy, but they themselves would not offer the same freedoms if they were in power. And to them, winning is more important than truth. The paradox of living in a Western democracy is that we allow ideas of all sorts to take place, including these and often without challenge.
People from our Western democracies not too long ago as an alternative to TikTok, when the US government threatened to close the app. Many of these people felt that the information they were getting fed from the Red Notes app was somehow withheld from them prior to signing up, and many praised the government of China for saving them from the so-called censorship and propaganda of the US.
China of course is not a good example of free speech and free ideas. For instance, they are one of four countries in the world that have blocked Medium (another being Russia, incidentally).
The Red Notes app is moderated by the same regime that sees a marketplace platform of free ideas like Medium as a problem. The same regime who’s leader sat next to Putin during the Victory Day parade. Do you think such a regime is going to allow criticism against them on their own platform?
And still, another paradox, when people joined the Red Notes app (which is named after Mao’s Little Red Book, by the way) they felt it was finally a platform of freedom and safety, away from platforms like Meta and X which had become a lot more loose around the same time.
It was Stalin who propped up Chairman Mao’s regime, which still exists today.
And also today, it’s Stalin who’s getting a revival in memorials sanctioned by Putin.
Every slave needs a ruler
We must be careful which ideas we flirt with in the West when the actions of our government are unsavory. We are yet to plunge as deep as those who are waiting on the wings, willing to take us further — their ideology first or nothing.
When I see my local socialists/Communists standing by their dinky popup table in town, adorned with images of Karl Marx, raised fists and tired slogans like ‘Eat the Rich’ only one question runs through my mind now:
You don’t understand what you’re doing, do you?
