MIAMI, United States. — The governments of Estonia and Poland execute the dismantling of several monuments erected in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who fought against the Nazi occupation, reported the Spanish newspaper ABC.
In this way, both countries respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24.
According to ABCthe Estonian government had already announced in early August that it intended to dismantle or relocate all Soviet monuments, between 200 and 400. Now, the government of that nation announces that the logistics of the operation are ready.
One of the operations carried out was the removal of a Soviet war memorial called the Bronze Soldier, which was located in a central square in the capital, Tallinn. It was transferred to the Estonian Defense Forces Cemetery.
Something similar is happening in Poland. The Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN), which has already removed a statue representing a Russian soldier, raised in commemoration of those who died fighting against the Nazi occupation, has drawn up a list of 60 monuments dedicated to commemorating the liberation of the Nazi regime by the Red Army that will now gradually disappear from public space.
“The communist system was introduced with the bayonets of soldiers like this. German Nazism was replaced by a Soviet regime that continued to murder until the end of 1989. Therefore, there is no place for such symbols in free Poland. This is the last phase of the decommunization of Poland”, he declared to ABC Karol Tadeusz Nawrocki, director of the IPN.
The Spanish media indicates that “although the Soviet monuments had previously been removed, in the spirit of the so-called ‘decommunization’, the trend did not really take off until 2016, when there were still around 200 monuments standing.”
The review expands that the decision to withdraw them “has caused tensions with Russia from the first moment” and that it generated the Russian Foreign Minister’s claim before Unesco Sergei Lavrovwho turned to that United Nations body to try to stop the so-called “monument control.”
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