21 June 2007

Victims of Communism

Chuck Colson reports on the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial Park in Washington, DC, dedicated to the one-hundred million victims of this failed political illusion: The Utopian Nightmare. Here is a prototype of the statue rising above the park, which is apparently modelled after the goddess of democracy built by the Tiananmen demonstrators in 1989:

Victims of Communism Memorial

To my mind this statue perhaps too closely resembles Vera Mukhina's overwrought monument to socialist realism, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman:

Worker and Kolkhoz Woman

On the other hand, I am inclined to think that the monument unveiled in Prague five years ago to commemorate communism's victims is more appropriate, evoking the sheer terror of the régimes it spawned. Click on the photo below, look at it carefully and see what you think:

Monument to victims of communism, Prague

No comments:

Post a Comment