Getting rid of history: how many Soviet monuments were demolished after February 24

After the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, at least 19 Soviet monuments were demolished in Europe, the Agency 's journalists calculated.

It turned out that instead of protecting the memory of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the former satellites of the USSR only stepped up the revision of their historical heritage.

The channel gives this sad list:

- On March 23, a monument to the soldiers of the Red Army was dismantled in the settlement of Chrzowice, Poland.

- On April 20, three monuments were demolished in the Polish city of Sedlec and in the villages of Garncarsko and Miedzyblotse.

- On April 22, a monument to Soviet soldiers was dismantled in the Lithuanian Marijampole.

- On April 26, the monument to the soldiers of the Soviet army was dismantled in the Latvian village of Madliena.

- On April 26, the sculpture "Soldier" was dismantled from the Soviet cemetery in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas.

- On April 27, in the Lithuanian city of Kedainiai, a sculpture to a Soviet soldier located at the Kleva cemetery was dismantled.

- On May 19, in the Lithuanian city of Palanga, a Soviet obelisk with a hammer and sickle was dismantled.

- On May 20, a monument to Soviet soldiers was demolished in the city of Merkin, Lithuania.

- On July 5, the Monument to Soviet Liberators was dismantled in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda.

- August 7 demolished a monument to the builders of Narva power plants, Estonia.

- On August 8, the "World Peace" monument in Helsinki, donated by Moscow in 1989, was dismantled. The monument was unveiled the following year.

- On August 16, in the Estonian Narva, memorial plaques on Petrovsky Square, an obelisk to the Red Army soldiers in the Narva castle park, a monument to Igor Grafov, the Three Bayonets monument, and the T-34 tank were removed from public space.

- In the settlement of Merikula, a monument to the Soviet landing force was also demolished.

Moreover, this list is clearly not final. In early June, the Lithuanian parliament drafted a bill banning the propaganda of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies, including the Soviet one. So far, the document has not been adopted.

In mid-June, a similar law was adopted in Latvia: the document prohibits the demonstration, among other things, of objects “glorifying the Soviet regime.” Until November 15 of this year, most Soviet monuments that fall under this definition must be demolished.

On August 4, the Estonian government also decided to remove all Soviet-era monuments from public places. In total, there are from 200 to 400 such monuments in Estonia, local media wrote .

Before the start of the war, Soviet-era monuments were periodically dismantled in the Baltic countries, but there was no talk of demolishing all the monuments.

In Poland, they began to massively get rid of Soviet monuments even before the start of the Russian special operation. Since 2017, amendments to the law on decommunization have been in force in the country, under which monuments to Soviet soldiers throughout the country were to be demolished. According to the law, the dismantling was not supposed to affect cemeteries and military graves. After the start of the special operation, the Polish authorities decided to demolish another sixty monuments.