On the outskirts of Moscow a huge “Soviet long-wonder land” exhibition at VDNKh. Now, the Russian government revived the site again, and with it the nostalgia for the USSR.
“In this Park I have the most beautiful memories.” With a Smile Pensioner Lydia Gavrilovna is your view about the “exhibition of achievements of national economy” to wander, short-VDNKh. “In the Soviet time we went for a walk with friends. We were delighted at the splendid pavilions in which the various republics of the Soviet Union presented their crafts and their best Harvest.” Today Gavrilovna came in alone. “The monumental buildings are still the same as it was then. It is the people that are different today. Better it is not to become,” she says bitterly.
The brisk stream of visitors who come to the VDNKh grounds, it shows just how scientific studies: Many Russians long for the Soviet Union. Two out of three people in Russia regret the collapse of the USSR. These Figures published by the independent Lewada-center for opinion research in a representative survey. Most of the respondents was depressed by the end of the Soviet economic system.
Pensioner Gavrilovna: “Many are not satisfied”
Lydia Gavrilovna also looks back wistfully to the past, back when you wrote with your “Comrades” in the electricity work together to write songs, and in the collective sang. “Today everything is different,” she says and looks around. “The times in which people are happy about the little things in life that are over. Many people today are not satisfied. They always want more money, the most expensive cars and flashy villas.”
A Soviet utopia discovered a new
Anyone who enters the grounds of the VDNKh, goes on the trail of a former utopia. Through the massive triumphal arch at the entrance to the Golden images of a worker and a peasant woman stretches a bouquet of wheat to the sky. Many of the about 100 pavilions are decorated with typical Soviet designs. Wall paintings and mosaics show the proletarians and baukonstrukt your, scholars and farmers, the Hammer and sickle. Today, exactly 80 years after its opening, the Park is a kind of USSR-the Museum.
The statues on the triumphal arch at the Park’s entrance: Typical Soviet motives
That so many people regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, is obviously connected with current political developments. As an example, Karina called Pipia, a sociologist at Lewada-center, raising the retirement age. A measure that would have felt much of the Russian population as an “attack on state social benefits” and what have then led to a longing for the Soviet social state.
Idealized Soviet Time
On the VDNKh grounds, the only people who can easily remember the Soviet times did not come. Young people visit the Park, attracted by free Festivals at the Statue of Lenin. Also on this day is booming there, in the center of the complex, loud music. Every day play here, various musicians, DJs and it will appear in the bet.
The 17-year-old Artyom is standing next to the stage. He belongs to the “Puteens” – the Generation of young people who have grown up in the 20 years since then, Vladimir Putin is in Moscow at the Power. “The Soviet Union I know only from stories of my parents,” says Artyom. Their stories had to do with the VDNKh-Kitsch but nothing to. “This amusement Park is nothing more than contemporary Propaganda in the Soviet garb”, he is annoyed.
Statue of Lenin in front of the house of the Russian peoples: With Rap, and DJs for young people attract
This fall, Artyom will begin his medical studies. He doesn’t know what he wants for the future of Russia: “The situation appears to be hopeless. Many of my friends want to emigrate. I, too, think about it.” Scientific surveys confirm that more than 40 percent of all young people in Russia prefer to live abroad.
The research field of socio-login Valeria Kasamara is the collective memory of the Soviet Union. Most young people “know little about the Soviet Union,” she says. One of Kasamaras research has shown that young Russians dominate life in the Soviet Union the ideal, while they have no idea how to solve the current challenges in Russia.
Embellished History
The Soviet commemoration at the VDNKh in Moscow is polished again to a high gloss. Shortly after the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, the Area had fallen noticeably. The Park was privatized, small-time criminals looted the exhibition pavilion and on the grounds haggled visitors to have smuggled electronics and plastics, furs.
Renovated fountain at the VDNKh grounds: Expensive, but cheap-looking repair
In the 2000s, the Putin government showed increased interest to revive the Soviet legacy. In 2013, the Moscow city government bought back the whole of the Park from private investors and since then has been working to renovate it, to declutter and to be provided with new tasks. Has been established in the Russia pavilion, a state of the art municipal and in the techno degree complex, dealing with 3D printers, learning.
Some modernisation work is, however, controversial: Many in Moscow are outraged, as are the fountains on the site: The high cost would include repair of grace in relation to cheap.have been renovated
Today, the Park embodies the urge to preserve the Past. New and old achievements are to be showcased. In the pavilion no 57, the exhibition “Russia – my story”. There, the Stalinist Terror is presented as a “necessary Evil”. As once in Soviet history books the atrocities are laminated and achievements glorified. A critical confrontation with the Soviet Union does not take place on the VDNKh grounds. Instead, the Hammer will be anywhere in the Park-and-sickle emblems re-plated.
All in the splendor of the ancient times.