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| Lenin |
KHERSON, UKRAINE Can’t go back, can’t go forward, stuck forever in a wasteland of crumbling monuments to an ambitious bygone dream where soldiers marched across those broken coble stones under Lenin’s ubiquitous gaze, where heroes were ceremoniously laid to rest in those forgotten weedy cemeteries, where athletes competed for the glory of the USSR in those boarded up gyms, where comrades sang out with pride the Internationale in those deserted stadiums, where industry buzzed with energy in those dilapidated factories, where the iron rule of law prevailed where now a bribe will do, where the collective socialist spirit rang out under the five-year plan across those desolate feral fields, where a five-square meter apartment came free to all in those shabby run down block houses, where young women worked hand in hand with their men but now search the internet for just a sober one, where signs and posters promoted the communist spirit graffiti has laid its mark, where children laughed and played on those rusty merry-go-arounds impervious to the broken promises of their future. This is Ukraine today.
