Belarus benefits from not having decommunization - Lukashenko
MINSK. Oct 30 (Interfax) - Belarus only benefited from not having decommunization, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.
"I put a stop to that immediately. They were ready to take down monuments and conduct decommunization, lustration here too [as in Russia and in Ukraine], I stopped it. And we benefited from that. Today, everyone is criticizing everyone for taking down monuments. We didn't take down any monuments," Lukashenko said at the Aleksandrov Republican Scientific Center of Oncology and Medical Radiology on Wednesday.
The state news agency BelTA quoted the president as saying that the country did not deny its historical past and Soviet-era monuments were not taken down in Belarus, unlike in the neighboring Ukraine and Russia.
"Yes, we had the year 1917 in our history. It came to us from other territories. We lived in the Russian Empire, we were part of it, a revolution happened, we started building the first socialist state with the Russians and others. The goals were noble in 1917 you see, good goals: to give something to the people and something to peasants. Shoot and hang the bad guys and the oligarchs, all that happened, but there were many good things too," Lukashenko said.
A decision was once made in Belarus to continue the tradition of celebrating October Revolution Day on November 7, he said.
"We kept that holiday and we attached a relevant ideology to it: we will finish construction work, harvesting, sum up the results, etc., and give gifts to people," Lukashenko said.