The statue must be removed by the owner, namely the city of Litomis. Ne Loha as an Obansque effort draws attention again to what this statue represents and what its true essence is. The monument and the pride of the Soviet Army, we want to cooperate with the city so that its statue disappears from here, said Zdenk Packk, coordinator of the meeting where people signed a petition to remove the statue. The symbol was carried in a large box with the address of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The soldier’s monument at Žirskovi Sadi came into the spotlight last June when someone painted a sling shot on its plinth.
The next day, someone else painted the foundation blue and wrote an apology to Ukrainians who had fought in the Red Army. The interior of the city of Litomysl was removed and a plaque was placed explaining the monument: a statue of a wolf commemorating the fallen Red Army soldiers during the liberation of Slovakia in 1975. A significant number of these victims were Ukrainians and other nationalities. This memorial commemorates the courage and valor of all the people who fought for our freedom in the ranks of the Red Army.
At first, this announcement provoked the displeasure of the Litomiers, who considered it misleading and wrong. The name of the monument is estimated and the pride of the Soviet army is undeniable, because it is written in a special document from 1972, according to which it is written in the city chronicle and in many other documents that Germans can read on our Facebook. Pack noted.
In its overview, the initiative explains: The Soviet Army was created in 1946 through the reorganization and naming of the Red Army. Therefore, the statue cannot in this case refer to the events that took place in Slovakia in 1945, which were carried out by the Allied forces, specifically the Red Army and the US Army. In the name of the monument, the communists used the occupied Soviet army very sparingly, because at the time the statue was erected, the Soviet army was occupying Slovakia and the communists were collaborating with this foreign power in the country. The monument celebrates the Soviet Army, which during its existence invaded many countries, causing numerous loss of life and massive material losses. By the time of normalization in 1975, the Communists needed a city that had written allegiance to the regime and the occupying army.
Former dissident Zdenk Brta spoke about the reason for the memorial meeting. In March 1972, the MNV published a tribute to the monument, est a slva Sovtsk armd, to replace the monument to Joseph Ducaville Stalin, which had been removed several years earlier. The main point of the monument, as stated at the last meeting: “to express the peace of the Slovak and Soviet peoples in a positive way and to highlight the international unity of our people,” explained Prata.
The Obansk initiative contradicted the town hall’s statement, which said on the city’s website in June that the statue was placed in the Ministry of Defense’s central register of cemeteries. However, a Defense Ministry document, which posted the initiative on its Facebook page, said the monument was never included in such a list.
The device is not bathed in propaganda
According to the initiative, the monument was created as one of the instruments of aggression and cooperation propaganda during the late normalization days, when the occupiers, figuratively speaking, were forced to bow to the occupying power of the Soviet Union. Our role model in all situations is its military as a liberator from Western civilizational values and communist ideologies in general.
Although the monument was opened before the liberation in 1975, it was regularly used for gatherings during the celebrations of Witzen Nora before May and the revolution, Baklk added.
The mayor of Litomice, Radek Lwy (ANO), came to the meeting and said that in response to the request to remove the statue, the residents wanted to remove the Ukrainian flag from the town hall. He said the mayor, who was personally opposed to any riots, would have to listen to comments and decide how to proceed.
After the Russian aggression against Ukraine, opposition to symbols of the Russian military intensified. Last May, the Red Army memorial in Luni was vandalized repeatedly with dog poo. Efforts are being made to remove them. A controversial statue of a Red Army soldier with a machine gun was removed in Bibislaw. In 2017, someone removed a plaque with an inscription and a bird star from the Red Army Memorial in Malm Besn na Stekko.
