The media has so far reported information about fifteen monuments: 11 demolished monuments to victims of repression and five monuments commemorating soldiers of other countries. “Absolute majority monuments were moved secretly. It is not known who did this and on whose orders. Local authorities often do not react at all to reports of this and usually do not admit involvement,” the BBC noted.
Among the 11 removed monuments described in the material almost all of them are related to Poland. The latest case is removal of large stones from the center of Yakutsk on which there are plaques with the names of Polish exiles — Siberian explorer. This monument commemorates Wacław Sieroszewski, Jan Czerski, Edward Piekarski and Aleksander Czekanowski.
In Tomsk Oblast, as the BBC reminds us, on November 11, 2022 – on Poland’s Independence Day – three warning signs related to Poland were vandalized simultaneously. Unknown perpetrators disperse plaque and cross from the monument in Tomsk, commemorates Poles who were victims of Stalinist repression in 1930-56. On the same day, a plaque was removed from the building of the former Polish Orphanage (Polish children deported to Siberia were sent there in 1942-44). And in the village of Białystok (Russian: Biełostok), founded in the 19th century by Polish settlers, crosses and plaques commemorate the villagers captured and shot during the so-called Polish NKVD Operation.
A cross and a plaque were also destroyed in the village of Połozowo (Tomsk Oblast), also founded by Polish settlers. The monument there commemorates the 33 residents captured and killed during the “Polish operation”.
The BBC also mentioned the crash in April this year. monument in Perm Krai, on the site of the former settlement of Galaszor exiles. The monument was erected in 2016 by a Lithuanian organization and commemorates Lithuanians and Poles buried in the local cemetery. Based on BBC records, the monument stood on the side of the field and it is not even known exactly when it was destroyed.
In June this year plaques and crosses removed from graves of Polish exiles in the towns of Kostousovo and Ozernoye in Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Urals. In the town of Mishisha in the Republic of Buryatia, a cross was destroyed and a plaque was torn off from a monument commemorating Poles who participated in the Trans-Baikal Uprising of 1866.
In July this year near St. Petersburg with the cemetery of victims of Stalinist repression called Lewaszowski Pustkow disappeared, commemorating the Poles murdered there. Earlier, in February, at the same cemetery, unknown perpetrators ripped off part of a plaque on a cross in memory of repressed Ukrainians.
Authorities officially announced their intention to remove the monument
The administration of the cemetery near St. Petersburg officially knows nothing about the incident. “However, there are times when the authorities officially announce that monuments to foreigners must be removed,” the BBC added. As he remembers, in Piwovarisha near Irkutsk in May this year. Polish monuments and Lithuanian crosses were removed, and authorities announced that they were interfering with the development of the area.
The BBC then listed monuments to foreign soldiers relocated in Russia: a monument to Finnish soldiers from the Winter War in Primorsk (Leningrad Oblast) and another Finnish monument in Priozorsk. The removal of the first monument was ordered by a court, while the second monument, which stood next to the Lutheran church, was removed secretly. In August this year in Belgorod Oblast, unknown persons removed and looted a monument to Italian soldiers from World War II. Previously, in the town of Rossosh in Voronezh Oblast, a monument to reconciliation with Italy, erected in the 1990s on Italy’s initiative as a symbol of recognition of the guilt of Italians for the events of World War II, was destroyed.
As the BBC notes, there is public disagreement around monuments to soldiers, but the same cannot be said for monuments to victims of oppression.
Activist Aleksandra Polivanova, who studies historical memory, stressed in an interview with the BBC that monuments to victims of repression remind us of the state’s crimes against its citizens, both against themselves and against others. The people commemorated were victims of “the imperial policies of Russia and the Soviet Union, which resulted in Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians ending up in Tomsk, Irkutsk, Perm Krai or Yakutia,” the researcher said.
“We can say that the memory of Soviet terror does not work before February 24 (i.e. before the Russian invasion of Ukraine-PAP) for the present and the future, because we – as a society – allowed this war to happen,” Polivanova said. .
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