Soviet Demolishing

From the MT:
"Poland Set to Demolish 500 Soviet Monuments"

The Polish government plans to demolish about 500 Soviet monuments throughout the country, head of the Institute of National Remembrance Lukasz Kaminsky said in an interview with online portal Onet.pl, the RBC news website reported Thursday.  Kaminsky — whose institute is responsible for investigating crimes against the Polish nation — said that plans for the demolition of the monuments, would be sent to local authorities in the coming weeks.  These monuments should have been demolished in the early 1990s, he said, and called the preservation of the monuments “a fatal mistake.”  The demolished monuments will be removed and transferred to museums where they can become “a witness of hard times,” Kaminsky said, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.  He added that such measures would not apply to the graves of Soviet soldiers, for which Poland will continue to care.  Soviet war memorials have fallen into disrepair and been regularly vandalized in Poland, where the Soviet role in World War II is viewed with ambiguity or outright hostility. In Russia, the official narrative is that the Red Army liberated Poland from Nazi occupation. Last year the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Poland of unleashing a “war on monuments” after they demolished a monument that had been erected to commemorate the camaraderie between Polish and Red Army soldiers, RBC reported.

 

^ Every country that was once part of either the Soviet Union and/or the Iron Curtain has a right to decide for themselves whether they want to keep Communist symbols. Some monuments were created by the local Communists while others were created by the Soviet Communists on the region. Many countries have already removed the monuments created locally and put them in parks, museums or destroyed them. The crimes of the Communists should not be glorified in the same way Nazi crimes shouldn't. They say history is made by the victors and the Communists lost. It still amazes me that Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania, Moldova, Croatia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia have not done more to correct the mistakes of their recent past made in their name by Communist dictators. More innocent men, women and children were persecuted, deported, imprisoned and/or murdered by the Communists in Eastern Europe and Central Asia than by the Nazis. Stalin, alone, killed more Soviet citizens than the German occupiers during World War 2 (the Great Patriotic War.) That number doesn't even count all the non-Soviets he killed around Europe. Yet, the Communists are still allowed to be in politics and many former Communists simply changed the name of their Party and stayed in power. Once a Communist always a Communist the same way once a Nazi always a Nazi. ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/poland-set-to-demolish-500-soviet-monuments/564120.html