Who would have thought that the extremely sensitive issue of rewriting history and war monuments, which for many years keeps in suspense the Russian authorities and society, these days will get long transatlantic echo, and then blow up and out of pandemic Europe. Is it possible to assume that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will have to beat his chest, promising to protect “to the last breath” is the monument to Winston Churchill, which is already inscribed “racist”.Accusatory pathos of those who have already dropped in the river Avon in Bristol which stood the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, but have not yet managed to bring down and carry it to the Thames, a monument to Churchill, has a clear anti-colonial character. Allegedly, the former conquerors, who built their prosperity on that robbed half the world, finally, needs to pay the debts of the affected countries and peoples.Britain and France (where the attacks began on the monuments de Gaulle) — former great colonial powers. It may seem that today’s European fighters against discrimination and racism is raised in the West, a new generation that have a troubled conscience for the crimes of the white masters in colonial pith helmets.No active expression of solidarity with those who goes into battle on the European barricades, no requirement of reparations in the countries of the vast African-Asian world we do not hear. There is no doubt.Churchill is to blame for “the Indian famine” of 1943, when he died 3 million people. As Churchill then decided that the wheat needs more Europeans than the inhabitants of the colony, which is no stranger to hunger. But today no one would desecrate in India, the monument to Churchill, if he were there. Just like no one wants to demolish erected in Calcutta in 1901 by order of the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, the Victoria memorial with the bronze statue of the Queen and the old cannons of the colonial era. Perhaps such guns were used in 1857, a terrible public executions for Indian soldiers-sepoys. Then Vasily Vereshchagin wrote his famous painting, “the Suppression of the Indian uprising by the British”. The Victoria memorial in no danger under a sky of Calcutta, except that its poisonous smog. Like a statue of Lenin.After the Second world war, when the collapse of the colonial system and on the world map dozens of new independent States, they even joined in the non-aligned Movement, which declared its main task to fight against “neocolonialism” and “neoimperialism”.Broke the chain of colonial peoples, it seemed, here-here will break the foundations of the world to exploit them. Since the heyday of non-aligned happened in the Cold war era, Soviet leaders saw in it an ally in the fight with the West, began to support him, including financially. In the Secretary General’s report on each party Congress was always a ritual about the importance of the legacy of colonialism.However, after the Cold war ended, and with it the power of the Kremlin, the non-aligned Movement as quickly blown away. His anti-colonial banners burned out from time to time, and the books of the founding fathers, as the stigma of the colonizers, dust on the shelves. Today it is just a kind of notional world the club with the once eye-catching sign, the Chairman of which became the hospitable Azerbaijan.As soon as the newly independent States turned into independent players, they became less interesting to continue the hard clinch with former metropolises. The developing countries now has another task is to use the cooperation with former oppressors by the West to implement their own development projects for integration, not confrontation.Pain stories have not gone away. But for India, the same sense of unfinished historical debate is not whether to demolish the monument to Queen Victoria in Calcutta, and that in 10-15 years around Britain in terms of GDP, that is, become more successful than the former colonizers. Make them Laggards!As for the latter-day fighters against colonialism within Western countries immigrants from the former colonies, for them it is just an opportunity to try to awaken a sense of historical guilt and a squeeze from Western companies a maximum dividend, without putting any efforts. If you don’t count the efforts of desecration of monuments to the Colston, Churchill, and de Gaulle.
