Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel is best known for this mural, “Brotherly Kiss,” depicting the socialist virtue of brotherhood among men:

The caption reads, roughly, “My God, help me to survive this deadly love affair,” in Russian and German.

The mural is based on an actual photograph of Soviet and East German Communist Party chairmen Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, depicting the two engaged in an act of socialist liberty, equality, and fraternity.  It was painted on the remains of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

Vrubel’s work was destroyed by German authorities earlier this year.  Evidently appreciation of history and satire are among the many things we’ve lost with the passing of the cold war.

Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish general who seized power at the behest of a Soviet Union worried about the Solidarity movement in 1981, described Erich Honecker as a disgusting, wet lothario, eager to impose his saliva-spattered kisses on communists of all stations, whether his victims wished Honecker’s attentions or not.  While in these enlightened times Honecker would be tried for harassment or worse, in those days the attentions of a Honecker were just something a prime minister or chairman had to endure.

Honecker was forced to resign as chairman of the East German party shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.  Though indicted for his role in the murders of hundreds of Germans attempting to flee to the west, Honecker fled to Russia and was allowed to emigrate to Chile, where many members of the former National Socialist regime also moved after 1945.  He died on May 29, 1994, and today consists of ashes, as does the government he led.

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