For the demolition of monuments to heroes of the Second World War in Europe are the United States
Americans demand from one of the Eastern European countries to speed up the demolition of monuments to the heroes of the Red Army. This was stated by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. We can talk about Poland or Bulgaria, where in recent years monuments to the heroes of the liberators have been subjected to acts of vandalism and even dismantling. In these countries, the United States are actively anti-Russian propaganda.On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to three radio stations: Sputnik, Echo Moskvy and Moscow Says. Among other things, he said that the United States is demanding that the demolition of monuments to the heroes of World War II be accelerated in an Eastern European country. “We know what kind of work the Americans are doing in (European) capitals, what messages they report,” he said, commenting on his earlier statement that Washington is using the Ukrainian crisis to spoil relations between Russia and the EU countries.
US rewrite Soviet past
“It got to the point that in one of the Eastern European countries, which the Red Army liberated, American emissaries demand from the government to speed up the demolition of monuments to the heroes of the Second World War,” he added, without answering the clarifying question about which particular country was being discussed.
Recall that the Soviet army, except for the republic of the Soviet Union, liberated Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia (now these are two separate states - the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, Austria (the eastern part of the country and Vienna), a number of other countries from fascism. .
Most of the Soviet monuments found in these countries. But there are monuments to the Soviet soldier in Germany, in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and France. In most Central European capitals, these monuments stand in cemeteries where warriors are buried, but in some cities, such as Budapest or Vienna, they are installed in city squares.
Reports of the desecration of monuments to Soviet soldiers in recent times regularly come from Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Apparently, it was precisely one of these countries that the minister had in mind.
Vandalism with Ukrainian accent
Note that in Ukraine there is literally a general demolition of monuments to Lenin and periodic mockery of monuments to Soviet heroes, but so far these phenomena cannot be called a trend, as in other countries of the post-Soviet space. Such barbarism is more characteristic of Eastern European countries, which Lavrov pointed out. However, it is not mainly about the demolition of monuments, but about their desecration.
A week ago, the Foreign Ministry demanded a thorough investigation of the desecration of the monument to the soldiers of the Red Army in the center of Sofia by vandals. “The special cynicism and provocative nature of this action was manifested in the fact that it was carried out on the eve of the great historical event - the 70 anniversary of the victorious end of the Second World War, in which the Soviet army and the Soviet people suffered the greatest casualties,” he said. The current leadership of Bulgaria "is not the first time showing connivance towards the organizers of such actions."
As reported, on a commemorative inscription at the base of the stele, vandals of yellow and blue paint brought out a call to demolish the memorial. Earlier, a monument to Soviet soldiers in the center of Sofia was painted more than once in colors.
Loudest story In an attempt to demolish the monument to the Soviet wars in Bulgaria, it turned around the monument to Alesha (a simple soldier Alexey Skurlatov became the prototype of the monument) in the city of Plovdiv. At the end of the 1980s, when pro-Western leaders came to power in Bulgaria, the authorities declared the monument “a symbol of Soviet occupation”. The city administration tried several times to dismantle Alyosha, but the townspeople organized round-the-clock watch and defended the monument. The point in this story put the Supreme Court in 1996 year. He ruled that the monument is a monument to the heroes of the Second World War and can not be destroyed.
Repeatedly vandalized a monument to a Soviet soldier-liberator in Vienna. In February, unknown persons poured black paint on the monument. Last May, it was decorated with yellow and blue paint imitating the flag of Ukraine, and in April 2012, the monument was poured with red paint.
"When everything is bad, you can always invent the enemy in the form of the past"
According to the associate professor of MGIMO, European specialist Kirill Koktysh, Sergey Lavrov spoke about Bulgaria. “The Soviet army really liberated this country. However, like many other Eastern European countries. Largely because of the position of Bulgaria, the construction of the “South Stream” broke down, ”Koktysh told the newspaper VIEW.
The interlocutor believes that the Americans need to keep the Bulgarian government. “The Bulgarian government made a fantastically stupid decision, denying Moscow the construction of a gas pipe. Naturally, this caused damage to the country's economy. Now the Americans need to come up with a reason in order to force out the real economic problem and replace it with another - far-fetched. When everything is bad, you can always invent an enemy in the form of the past, ”said Koktysh.
“The meaning of the demands of American emissaries is to create a new elite. There is a striking out of the old elite and history. This is a blank slate format. Like, everything that was before was bad. And what will be in the future, by definition, will be good. The negative energy of the masses is sent to the demolition of monuments. People forget about economic problems and social unrest, ”said the source.
Moreover, a political scientist noted that this is not the first case in Eastern Europe when monuments to heroes of the Second World War are being demolished. “We remember cases in Estonia. It all began with Poland. It was Warsaw who first adopted the law on lustration and tried all these technologies on itself. Further, the same scheme is implemented on the thumb in Ukraine and Bulgaria, ”Koktysh concluded.
"The United States is forcing Poland to forget about the occupation of the Third Reich"
Polish political scientist, director of the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis Mateusz Piskorski is inclined to believe that Sergey Lavrov had in mind Poland. According to the interlocutor, this is where unprecedented propaganda and revisionism are conducted. “Given the degree of pressure that the United States has on the leadership of Poland, it is possible that Sergei Lavrov was referring to this particular country. Polish elites are usually very much amenable to American pressure, ”he told the newspaper VIEW.
“Now there is a problem between the Polish society and the American establishment. It lies in the fact that the United States is forcing Poland to forget about the occupation of the Third Reich. In addition, at the expense of the Americans, a number of events are being held in Poland, which put Germany on the same level under Hitler and the USSR. Moreover, there is intensified propaganda of the so-called occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union, ”said Piskorski.
Moreover, the interlocutor notes that the discourse that promotes the idea that the USSR is worse than Nazi Germany is gaining momentum in Poland.
“In Poland, various conferences, seminars, symposia are held at which the negative role of the USSR during the Second World War is discussed. For example, there is such a writer as Anna Applebaum, who is the wife of the Speaker of the Polish Parliament Sikorski. At the expense of American funds, she writes books that are actively printed in Poland. They say that the USSR committed more crimes in Poland than the Third Reich, ”the Polish political scientist noted.
We add that in late February, the Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the increasing incidence of vandalism against the monuments of the Second World War in Poland. The reasons, in the opinion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "are rooted in the frank anti-Russian campaign conducted by some Polish politicians and the media and their deliberate falsification of historical events." They also noted that a special concern is caused by the fact that the Polish authorities were also involved in the “war on monuments”.
According to diplomats, in February of this year, graves were desecrated in the cemetery of the Red Army soldiers in Kalisz, a memorial plate was broken for soldiers-liberators in the city of Aleksandrów-Lodzinski, a monument to Polish and Soviet paratroopers in the city of Lyubash was desecrated.
Also in Poland last December, unknown persons desecrated the military cemetery in the city of Bialystok, where the soldiers of the Red Army are buried. Unidentified 26 grabs tombstones with a red star and scattered them around the cemetery. The city authorities promised to restore the graves.
In the autumn, monuments were desecrated in the Polish cities of Pruszcz Gdańsk (Pomeranian Voivodeship) and Nowy Sacz (Malopolska Voivodeship). Another incident occurred in August in the Warmia-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland, where a monument to the soldiers of the Red Army was desecrated. And in the middle of May of last year, unknown persons broke a plaque at a monument to Soviet soldiers at the memorial cemetery on Reymont Street in Polish Raciborz.
Also in May, in the town of Penenzhno in northern Poland, vandals again desecrated the monument twice to the Hero of the Soviet Union, commander of the 3 Belorussian Front, Army General Ivan Chernyakhovsky.
In addition, it is in Poland that there are cases when monuments were demolished by the decision of local authorities. In July last year, in the city of Limanov, by order of the municipal authorities, a monument of gratitude to the Red Army was demolished. In the spring of last year, the authorities spoke in favor of demolishing the monument to Chernyakhovsky. Radoslaw Sikorski, then Foreign Minister of Poland, who openly held a pro-American position, said that the Soviet general "was responsible for the arrest and deportation of several thousand Home Army soldiers to camps, many of whom died." However, the fate of the monument is not yet decided.
Last fall, vandals in Prague desecrated a monument to Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev, repainting its lower half in pink. Konev was a famous Soviet commander who received many medals and orders, including "For the capture of Berlin" and "For the liberation of Prague." In the Czech Republic, this is one of the few Soviet monuments that have survived to this day. After the communists were removed from power in 1989, most of these monuments were demolished or sent to museums. The story with a tank IS-2 in the Prague-5 area in 1991, which the group, under the leadership of the infamous artist David Cherny, repainted in pink - a symbol of pacifism.
In recent years, the issue of moving the monument to Konev to a less visible place or lowering the pedestal has been considered several times in different instances of Prague. But no action has yet been taken.
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