RIGA
- Latvia's ethnic Russian community
slammed the town of
Bauska for relocating a Soviet
memorial stone to a local cemetery,
sparking pleas from the president
and prime minister not to politicize
the event.
The monument, erected to honor
Soviet soldiers who fought against
Nazi Germany, is a large boulder
inscribed with the words "to the liberators
of Bauska." The relocation
of the monument from a local garden
to the Soviet military cemetery
is due to be completed on Sept. 1.
Russian media immediately
linked the decision with the recent
incident in Tallinn, when a wellknown
Soviet war memorial 's the
Bronze Soldier 's was moved from a
downtown square to a military
cemetery. Two days of riots followed
the statue's removal, resulting
in one death and nearly 60 million
kroons (3.83 million euros) in
damages to the Estonian capital.
The Russian television news
agency RTR was present for the
Aug. 9 initiation of the Bauska
monument's move, which they
branded an example of the
"Tallinn syndrome" in Latvia.
The Regnum news agency was
even more explicit in their comparison
of the two events, claiming in
their headline that "Latvia follows
Estonia's example in transferring
monument to Soviet soldiers." The
agency went on to claim that the
NGO that proposed the move, the
Latvian Community for National
Warriors, "holds sacred the memory"
of Latvian soldiers who fought
for Nazi Germany during the war.
Latvia's president and prime
minister stressed the decision to
move the boulder had been made
long ago and that Russian Federation
officials were notified of the intention.
They reiterated there was no
need to politicize the decision.
Russian Ambassador to Latvia
Viktor Kalyuzny claimed that
Russia was not informed about the
December 2005 decision to relocate
the memorial, calling such claims
"nonsense."
The Latvian Anti-Fascist
Committee, a rights group based in
Riga and composed mainly of
Russians, made similar claims
shortly after the monument
removal process started.
Maris Freimanis, deputy head
of the Bauska City Council, had
previously told Telegraph, a
Russian language daily, that the
monument's replacement was initiated
"by an NGO whose name
nobody remembers any longer."
Janis Miculis, Bauska City
Council's executive director, told
the Latvian language daily Diena
that "on March 3, 2006, then
Russian military attache in Latvia,
Sergey Kolevatov, his assistant
Viktor Adoniyev and a technical
director visited the city. Both sides
agreed that the stone can be transferred
to a military cemetery."
President Valdis Zatlers told
reporters Aug. 16 that "the stone
must be treated very seriously. The
issue should not be excessively
politicized."
Kalvitis took an identical
stance, adding that there were no
political undertones in the decision
to move the monument. "Graves
and memorial sites are not an
object of political intrigue," he said.
Despite these warnings, the
leftist bloc For Human Rights in
United Latvia decided on Aug. 19 to
start a campaign to protect Soviet
memorial sites.
The opposition
party says that it does not want to
allow the "deliberate destruction
of WWII memorials by nationalists
of the Baltic states."
The bloc claims that there are
more than 300 Soviet soldier
memorial sites in Latvia, many
of which are in dire need of
repair.
