MOSCOW, April 4, Pavel Surkov.Today, monuments to Soviet and Russian heroes and classics in Europe are under threat. Many memorials have already been destroyed or moved to special museum complexes. How the West is trying to cancel Russian culture, erase the facts of world history and who opposes this — in the material.
Pushkin monument in Riga: some desecrate, others protect
Vandals doused the monument to Pushkin with paint. In mid-March, residents of Riga held a picket against the demolition of the monument. Mayor of Daugavpils Andrey Elksninsh has offered the help.
«The owner of the monument is the Riga City Council and the inhabitants of the city. If it is not needed, they are ready to take it away!» he wrote on social media.
The mayor also recalled that there is Pushkin Street in Daugavpils, «and in the fortress, by the way, his friend, the Decembrist Küchelbecker, was sitting.» -type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.666666666666667″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»400″ data-source-sid=»sputnik_photo» class=»lazyload» width=» 1920″ height=»1280″ decoding=»async» />
Alyosha stands over the mountain: vandals and authorities against the legendary monument
Nazi symbols and anti-Russian slogans were applied to the monument to a Soviet soldier in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The city authorities have long been going to demolish the monument as a «symbol of the Soviet occupation.»
But in 1998 the Supreme Court of Bulgaria recognized the statue as a monument of World War II. So it won't be demolished. But there is no protection from vandals.
Dismantled and removed from sight
A five-meter obelisk with a red star and an inscription in Russian and Polish «Eternal glory to the heroes of the Soviet army who died for the freedom of peoples in 1945».
The same was done with the monument in Miedzibloci, erected in honor of 99 soldiers of the Polish Army and nine Soviet soldiers who died at the end of January 1945 during the liberation of Zlotov. The authorities said that individual elements of the sculptures will remain in storage at the Institute of National Remembrance, but they will not be shown, as they «propagated the totalitarian system.»
The memorial to Soviet soldiers in the Lithuanian city of Kėdainiai was recognized as «of no value» (as was the monument to fallen soldiers at the Šeta cemetery) and destroyed.
Pushkin moves to the museum
To the park Monuments in Hungary were transported in the late 1990s by numerous sculptures of Lenin and the Hungarian communist Béla Kun. A statue of a soldier who stood in Budapest, on Mount Gellert, was also sent there. Two sculptural figures — a fighter and a woman with a palm branch in their hands — symbolized the liberation of Hungary from the Nazis. The woman is now alone.
Monuments to Pushkin in Chernigov and Nikolaev were sent to museums. Nothing is known about the fate of the demolished statue of Gorky in Vinnitsa. » data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»395″ data-source-sid=»rian_photo» class=»lazyload» width=»1920″ height=»1264″ decoding=»async» />
The warrior-liberator in the German Treptow Park is still in place. This is the end of the «journey of the sword» trilogy: in Magnitogorsk there is a monument for the transfer of forged weapons, it is raised by the «Motherland» on Mamaev Kurgan and lowered by a Soviet soldier in Germany.
April 1, 07:00