MOSCOW, May 30. A monument to the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was dismantled in Riga, the City Council reported.
«On May 30, the Riga Monuments Agency transferred the sculpture of the poet Alexander Pushkin to storage in Kronvalda Park, in order to then transfer it to the museum of the Union of Artists of Latvia, with which a conceptual agreement was reached on the storage and future exhibition of the sculpture,» the release says.
Local authorities claim that the installation of the sculpture in the park «did not comply with regulations».
The Kods Rīgai bloc took the initiative to demolish the monument to Pushkin. At the end of April, the ruling coalition of the Riga City Council supported this idea. The monument was planned to be demolished in early May in order to prevent its residents from gathering on Victory Day.
Over the past six months, the sculpture has been desecrated three times. The Russian embassy suggested that «certain interested forces» deliberately create a «halo of instability» around the monument and prepare public opinion for its demolition almost under the pretext of saving it from vandals.
Latvia, along with neighboring Lithuania and Estonia, was one of the first republics of the former USSR, which almost completely eradicated the Soviet legacy in monumental art. Many Soviet monuments have been destroyed in the country, and laying flowers on the sites of dismantled military memorials faces criminal liability.