Alyosha Monument, Plovdiv Bulgaria

A monument to the Soviet soldier-liberator (Alyosha monument) on Bunarjik Hill ('Liberators' Hill) in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. © Sputnik / Alexey Vitvitsky

This the third giant concrete Soviet era statue I've come across. The others are the giant soldier in Murmansk and Mama-Mia in Volgograd. I thought I had put up a post about Mama-Mia but I could not find it, but while I am rooting around in the archives, I found some damaged posts (photos mysteriously disappeared), which means rooting around in old photos. 

As a side note, Google Photos now has date index slider along the right hand end of the screen so you can slide right to the year and month you are looking for.

So now I'm looking at some photos from November of 2012, and there are some Russian fighter aircraft in there, like this one:

Sukhoi Su-30

I'm looking at this airplane and I am thinking these guys are like the knights of old. As a society, we band together to provide them with the very best weapon we can make, and then we send them out to do single combat with the enemy. What we are fighting about matters very little, what matters is how it is portrayed in our minds, and the way it is portrayed in our minds is glorious single combat against the enemy! It is portrayed that way by our animal instinct. You can disagree with this portrayal, but it's still going to be there in your mind, prancing around like Bozo the clown and singing in a loud voice about how glorious fighting and killing is. With practice you can relegate this clown to the back of your mind, but he's still going to be there. It takes real effort, which consumes energy, to keep this clown repressed. Slack off a bit, get run down and this clown is going to be there front and center preaching conflict and mayhem. No wonder we tend to get in more arguments when we're tired. And no wonder war is never ending.

The photo at the top comes from an article in RT (formerly Russia Today) that is mostly complaining about how the West doesn't appreciate how much effort the Soviets put into defeating the Nazi's and how much it cost them. I've got to admit, we are pretty self centered, glorying in our victory over the Nazi's and pretty much ignoring Russia. But Russia is the 'bad guy' these days. I mean people who know about WW2 appreciate what the war effort cost Russia, well, we appreciate it intellectually, I don't think you can really understand it, like in your bones, unless you lived through it, and there aren't too many of those people left. But politicians need a story to tell the masses, and Russia has been the bad guy since forever, so it's easy to keep portraying them as the bad guy. I think China is going to be more of a problem, but I don't know. They have made great strides since WW2, but they are a totalitarian state, and we know dictatorships foster idiocy, so we won't know if they are a real problem until push comes to shove. We seem to be inching closer, but that could go on for years. We shall see.

Russian fighter aircraft photo album