felix

i am having my morning coffee and reading today's moscow times. headlines on front page: "'Iron Felix' Back at Petrovka 38".

now, only those who really know russia and/or the soviet union know what i am talking about, so let me explain for the others.

petrovka 38 is the address of the headquarters of the moscow police. you want to scare someone, you tell them you're gonna inform petrovka 38. it comes in second right after the lubyanka, the headquarters of the former kgb and of today's fsb. the lubyanka has a long history in this country.

and felix? felix is felix dzerzhinsky. he was the founder of the soviet secret police, i.e. the kgb (or, rather, the predecessor of the kgb). he was called iron felix. you wanted to strike fear into someone, you mentioned iron felix. and his friends.

during the soviet times, there was this tendency of erecting several-metre-high statues, or busts, of all sorts of important personalities of the soviet times and history. the most obvious are lenin and stalin. and felix was also one of them. there were several felix-statues all over the city, the biggest one standing in front of the kgb-headquarters on lubyanskaya ploshchad (square). they say that that one weighed 16 ton.

after/during the breakup of the soviet union, in august 1991, many of these soviet-era monuments were brought down either by angry mobs or by the authorities, fearing the mobs would bring them down. felix' bust in front of the lubyanka was brought down by the mob. the one that used to stand in the courtyard of petrovka 38 was quickly removed by the authorities.

and now?

now it was restored back to its old place in petrovka 38.

that is scary.

that is like, say, germany would re-erect old statues of hitler. or iraq, in ten years from now, re-erect old statues from saddam.

scary. just like, when you go see stalin's tomb, there are always fresh flowers...

the ironness of the soviet union ain't dead yet in this country...