President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) started his official programming day in Moscow like every head of state who visits Russia: at the ceremony of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
It is a small irony for a politician who, in his inaugural speech in 2019, had promised to work to “free Brazil from socialism”.
The tomb is one of the symbolic high points of the celebration of the victory of the Soviet Union, a communist empire that lasted from 1922 to 1991 and is at the center of the fetishes of Bolsonarism, in World War II (1939-45, but which began for the Soviets in 1941). and what is called in the country the Great Patriotic War).
Under the 1967 construction lie the remains of the defenders of Moscow, who held off the Nazi invaders just a few kilometers from the capital. The monument also features 12 pedestals with the names of the so-called hero cities, a Soviet title given to those that withstood brutal sieges.
Putin, who will receive Bolsonaro this Wednesday (16) amid the serious crisis with Ukraine and the West, is not a longing for communism, but he established a primer in praise of the heroic aspects of the regime – centered on the experience of war.
Russia, the largest of the 15 countries that made up the Soviet Union, is its successor state. In 2004, Putin even changed the name of one of the 12 cities honored, Volgograd, to its wartime name.
It was Stalingrad, or city of Stalin, which honored the communist dictator and was the scene of one of the turning points of the conflict, when the Soviets defeated the Nazi Sixth Army that had conquered it.
Under Putin, it is a crime to try to tell alternative stories to the official one about the conflict. There is an emotional reason too: about 70% of Russian families lost a family member in the war, which took 27 million Soviet souls (9 million in uniform), almost 40% of the total victims.
Even if he wanted to, Bolsonaro would have a hard time getting rid of communist memories in Moscow. The city is full of reminiscences of the period, although they have diminished in the 30 years of capitalist life.
In any case, the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), the founder of the regime, is in front of the Kremlin where Putin will receive the Brazilian. The red stars on the towers of the medieval fortress, referring to the communist symbol, too.
Plaques honoring figures from the regime and society are scattered throughout the city, which still has a solitary bust of Karl Marx (1818-83) in front of the famous Bolshoi Theater. Even Lenin, who saw most of his statues fall after 1991, is still seen here and there, including a large monument in Kaluga Square.
Bolsonaro’s anti-communism does not differ, in formation, from that of his generation of officers, shaped by the 1964 dictatorship. But even among those who remained in the Armed Forces, while Bolsonaro left the Army as captain in 1988, there is no one who believes in socialism or communism today.
What there is is an understanding that the left subsists in an ideological way, adopting the defense of alternative themes to socialism in the behavioral and environmental fields, for example. Bolsonaro also attacks on this front, but insists that his supporters keep alive the idea that a specter haunts Brazil, to paraphrase Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848).
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