"On January 3, 1992 a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. After this was pointed out to the Russian hosts, they quickly and quietly corrected the error during the first intermission. The years after the Cold War witnessed the beginnings of dramatic changes in peoples’ identities and the symbols of those identities. Global politics began to be reconfigured along cultural lines. Upside-down flags were a sign of the transition, but more and more the flags are flying high and true, and Russians and other peoples are mobilizing and marching behind these and other symbols of their new cultural identities."
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Academics from the United StatesHarvard University alumniColumbia University facultyHarvard University facultyConservatives from the United States
Original Language: English
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Ch. 1: The New Era in World Politics, § 1 : Introduction: Flags And Cultural Identity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington
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Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington (18 April 1927 – 24 December 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. During the 1980s Apartheid era in South Africa, he served a
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