Poland has demolished four so-called ‘Monuments of Gratitude’ to the armies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as part of an ongoing decommunisation programme.
The demolitions, which were co-ordinated across four towns by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, were aimed at undoing the erroneous communist-era narrative that Red Army forces acted as liberators when they drove out the Germans towards the Second World War, rather than an alternative set of invaders.
Indeed, prior to the outbreak of hostilities between the Soviet Communist regime and the German National Socialist regime, they had invaded Poland more or less jointly, with the Red Army attacking the country from the east not long after the Germans had invaded from the east, with the militaries of the two militaries even staging joint victory parades.
Four communist-era Red Army monuments have been removed across Poland.
It's a new drive to remove symbols of Moscow’s post-World War II domination and to show its condemnation of Russia’s conflict with neighboring Ukraine. 🇵🇱🇷🇺🇺 pic.twitter.com/zrXolpZINv
— CGTN Europe (@CGTNEurope) October 29, 2022
“This is a monument to disgrace, a monument of contempt of the winners over the victims,” said the President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr Karol Nawrocki, as he oversaw the demolition of one of the memorials in Glubczyce — an event that was live-streamed on social media.
“In 1945, the Soviets did not bring liberation, they brought another captivity. They were capturing Poland and treating it as booty,” he added, denouncing the monuments as a “symbol of the system which, after 1945, subjected half of Europe, including Poland,” a “symbol of the system that murdered Polish workers and anti-communist opposition activists” — and, finally, as “a symbol of the system that inspires today’s leaders of the Russian Federation, that are responsible for the war in Ukraine.”
“A Russian tank decorated with the Soviet Union flag heading towards Kherson has become a very powerful symbol viewed by the whole world,” said Nawrocki elsewhere in a statement linking the decommunisation programme to the contemporary invasion of Ukraine even more directly.
“It is therefore clearer than ever that the removal of names and symbols promoting communism is of utmost importance,” he explained.
“Although the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago, and its crimes have been thoroughly examined, there are many places in the world where we can still find monuments commemorating the Red Army, and streets or squares named after Soviet dignitaries.
“I hereby appeal to the authorities of all countries, especially those of the former Communist Bloc, to erase from the public space all names and symbols referring to people, organisations, events or dates from the communist era,” he urged.
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