Photo: Marcin Bielecki (EPA-EFE)
Statues and memorials built to glorify and commemorate the Soviet Union and the Red Army have been torn down — in one case illegally, in several countries amid outrage at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On the same day workers in Kyiv dismantled a Soviet-era monument to friendship between Ukraine and Russia on April 26, far to the north in Latvia a Red Army memorial stone was being pulled out of the ground.
The following photos show the destruction of Soviet monuments — which many see as symbolic of historical Kremlin oppression — that has taken place across Europe since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Serhiy Myrhorodsky, one of the designers of the 1982 monument watched the dismantling alongside around 100 other people. Myrhorodsky told Reuters “Russia invaded Ukraine…. Can we be friends with Russia? What do you think? This is our worst enemy, that is why the monument to Russian-Ukrainian friendship doesn’t make sense any more.”
The stone pictured above was engraved with the words “On September 26, 1944, the Soviet Army liberated Madliena from fascist German invaders.”
The council of the Ogre Municipality, which includes Madliena Parish, announced in late April that it would remove five memorial stones to Red Army fighters in the region. The Madliena stone was the first to be targeted.
In 2017, Poland enacted a law prohibiting monuments that “symbolize or propagate” totalitarian regimes. The law does not apply to objects that are “solely artistic,” or that were erected over the remains of fallen soldiers.
Before the Garncarsko monument’s destruction a plaque was removed that had previously been defaced with red paint. The panel declared “Eternal glory to the heroes killed for the honor and independence of the Soviet homeland.”
During World War II, the Red Army drove Nazi German forces out of Poland, but the subsequent communist regime imposed on the country is seen by most Poles as a dark period in their history before they regained their independence in 1989.
Polish police told local media that this 1950s-era graveyard monument to the Red Army in Koszalin appeared to have been illegally toppled by someone using an excavator who drove into the cemetery late at night. The sandstone memorial was of a Soviet soldier being hugged by a girl with a dove in her hand.
The president of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance attended the demolition of a monument in Chrzowice and declared “There is no room for memorials and symbols marked with the red star in public in a free, independent, and democratic Poland, nor in a free Europe.”
