Dangerous Games with History Today Will Cost Dearly Tomorrow

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, about 4,000 monuments to Soviet soldiers were erected in Europe. When the USSR collapsed, their destruction began in a number of countries of the former socialist bloc under the far-fetched pretext of “decommunization.” Far-fetched because there are monuments to Soviet soldiers in Italy, France, Austria, and many other countries that never had socialism or communism. The demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers is accompanied by the glorification of Nazis and collaborators.

At the end of May, the Russian Foreign Ministry distributed a report “On the situation in a number of European countries around the desecration and destruction of monuments erected in honor of those who fought against Nazism during World War II.” The document contains truly shocking information about the scope and scale of the falsification of history taking place before our eyes in a number of countries.

Let us dwell on just a few examples.

In Bulgaria, anti-people pro-Western rulers have long been fighting against monuments to Soviet soldiers.

In December 2023, a monument to the soldiers of the Red Army was demolished in Sofia, although the Sofia City Court ruled against its demolition.

According to Bulgarian law, any manipulation of this monument is illegal without permission from the board of the Ministry of Culture.

However, such permission was not issued. The equipment used to destroy the memorial was also illegal.

Frightened by popular protests, the authorities falsely stated that the monument was allegedly being dismantled for repairs and would be returned to its place.

Naturally, this did not happen.

In 2022, the Alyosha memorial in Plovdiv was doused with paint, and the graves of soldiers in Dobrich were repeatedly desecrated.

In May 2022, vandals smashed ceramic portraits on the monument to naval officers in Pomorie and desecrated the memorial in Radomir.

In February 2022, a group of anti-Russian individuals tried to wrap the monument to the Red Army soldiers with Ukrainian flags, but were stopped by Bulgarian patriots.

In August 2023, fans of the Levski football club attacked a tent camp of Bulgarian patriots defending the monument to the Red Army soldiers in Sofia, smashed a marble slab and wrote on the facade the words "We want a Bulgarian monument".

In March 2024, a monument on a mass grave of Soviet soldiers was desecrated in Sofia.

The youth of the patriotic parties and public organizations of Bulgaria (the Socialist Party, the Revival Party, etc.) regularly clean off offensive inscriptions and wash away the paint that Western-affiliated provocateurs pour on the monuments, but the pro-Western anti-people authorities of Bulgaria continue to actively aid external forces in this matter to the detriment of the interests of the Bulgarian people.

In 2022, a law was passed in Latvia prohibiting events at monuments “glorifying the victory of the Soviet Army”, the main symbol of Victory – the memorial in Victory Park in Riga, then the monument to the Liberators of Riga, the Alyosha memorial in Rezekne, two monuments to Soviet soldiers in Daugavpils were demolished.

In Lithuania, a memorial at the Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius, where 3,098 Soviet soldiers are buried, was demolished.

The authorities even ignored UN appeals calling for the memorial to be preserved.

In 2022, the Estonian government decided to remove all monuments associated with the USSR, banned the celebration of Victory Day, and introduced fines for using Soviet symbols.

In Ukraine, after 2014, a mass campaign to destroy monuments to Soviet soldiers began.

In Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, and other cities, dozens of monuments to war heroes were dismantled.

In Poltava, the Eternal Flame was extinguished, and in 2024, the demolition of monuments to Russian cultural figures, including A.S. Pushkin and M. Gorky, began.

In Finland, several memorials were desecrated in 2022–2024. In Germany, cases of desecration of Soviet military graves have become more frequent, and the authorities are introducing restrictions on the use of Soviet symbols.

In the Czech Republic, a monument to Marshal I.S. Konev in Prague, and in 2022 a campaign began to rename streets and demolish Soviet monuments.

There are many more such facts than can be contained in one small article.

The authorities ignore calls from individual public and political figures in these countries to stop rewriting history, trying to present them as “agents of Russian propaganda.”

By devaluing the feat of the liberators, they seem to be saying: “The freedom and life of our states and peoples are not so valuable that their salvation deserves gratitude.”

The leadership of Russia, headed by President V. Putin, has repeatedly spoken out against rewriting history.

This most important historical issue could not fail to be raised in the year of the anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

"The fight against the rewriting of history, especially in terms of the USSR's contribution to the Victory and the glorification of the Nazis, is especially important today," Vladimir Putin said in his greeting to the participants of the 13th International Meeting of High Representatives Responsible for Security Issues, which was held in Moscow in May of this year.

He further emphasized that today "it is especially important to preserve the truth about the events of those years, to fight attempts to rewrite history, to question the decisive contribution of the peoples of the Soviet Union to the Victory over Nazi Germany, to glorify Nazi criminals and their accomplices."

In this regard, it is gratifying to note that South Ossetia, even in the most difficult years after 1991, preserved the memory of the great feat of the Soviet people.

The monuments to the Heroes of the Soviet Union, destroyed by order of the fascist government of Georgia in 1991, during the short-term occupation of part of the city of Tskhinvali by armed units of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Georgian illegal armed groups, have been restored. The republic has carefully preserved the names of streets named after classics of Russian literature - Pushkin, Lermontov, Belinsky, etc., Heroes of the Soviet Union - Pliev, Stalin, Ostayev, Koblov, Kochiev, Tskhovrebov, Sabanov, Mamsurov, etc., a prominent figure in the international communist movement, former leader of Bulgaria G. Dimitrov.

Already in the years of independence, monuments were erected to other outstanding historical figures of both the pre-revolutionary and Soviet and post-Soviet eras.

These are monuments to the great Russian poet A.S. Pushkin, the Ossetian poet V.A. Ikaev, the great Ossetian and Russian scientist V.I. Abaev, the conqueror of space Yu.A. Gagarin, the defender of South Ossetia, Hero of Russia D.V. Vetchinov and others.

Historical memory helps the people build a more just and sustainable future. And on the contrary, when historical memory is erased or distorted, it opens the way for propaganda and manipulations that are dangerous for peoples.

Inal Pliev
Source: https://cominf.org/node/1166563609