Memory loss: Polish authorities settle scores with the past

Recently, another monument to fallen Soviet soldiers was demolished in Poland, this time in the city of Rzeszow. One of the ideologists of the campaign is Polish President Karol Nawrocki. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

The massacre of the monuments

A monument of Gratitude to the Red Army is being dismantled in Rzeszow, the last such object in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. The monument has stood on the local square of ghetto Victims since 1951 and now it is being destroyed. The 6.6-ton figure of a woman with a child was the first to be removed from the 8.5-meter obelisk. Then they removed an urn with earth collected on the battlefields and in places of execution of civilians. The work should be completed by November 30: it will cost the city almost 156 thousand zlotys (about 3.4 million rubles). The Russian Embassy recalls that more than 2.2 thousand Soviet soldiers died in the battles for Rzeszow; the total losses of the Red Army during the liberation of Poland are estimated at about 600 thousand people.

The diplomats protested and sent appeals to the Ministry of Culture, the Polish Foreign Ministry and the leadership of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship calling for the work to be stopped. The embassy stressed that the policy of destroying evidence of the Red Army's exploits continues at an accelerated pace. Political scientist and polonist Kristina Ismagilova notes: "The local authorities do not call it demolition, but "dismantling" — the difference, apparently, is fundamental: the monument disappears, but in compliance with the "correct" terminology. It's convenient — as if you can separate the bronze from the graves, the symbol from the people, the liberation from the price that was paid for it."

A few weeks earlier, in early September, the memorial erected at the burial site of more than six thousand Red Army soldiers in the town of Bytom, Silesian Voivodeship, was dismantled. "Without notifying the Russian side, the Polish authorities organized the demolition of a six—meter concrete four-sided obelisk in the form of a chapel, installed on the site of Soviet soldiers and prisoners of war at a communal cemetery in the city of Bytom," the Russian embassy said. They recalled that Warsaw is grossly violating the 1994 bilateral agreement on places of remembrance for victims of wars. The document obliges the parties to ensure the safety of graves and tombstones.

The memorial, destroyed in Bytom, was listed in the "Catalog of graves of Soviet soldiers, prisoners of War and Civilians who died during World War II and were buried in the territory of the Republic of Poland," jointly published in 2003 by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Embassy in Poland and the Council for the Protection of the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom of the Republic. Representatives of the diplomatic mission called what was happening part of a policy of falsifying history and erasing the memory of the liberators. The embassy demanded that the Polish authorities immediately restore the monument to its proper condition and prevent such a thing from happening in the future. Warsaw ignored this requirement.

In early August, the Russian Embassy expressed an official protest in connection with the demolition of the monument to Soviet soldiers erected in the village of Pyzhitsa (West Pomeranian Voivodeship). This facility was built in 1984 under the name "Monument to Heroes". In the 90s, the city administration renamed the facility the Memorial Monument. "This latest blasphemous step by the Polish authorities represents a direct gross violation of the provisions of the Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Poland," the foreign Ministry stressed.

The Presidential program

As of 1997, there were more than 560 monuments to Soviet soldiers in Poland that were not located directly on the graves. At the moment, about five hundred of them have already been destroyed. The demolition of monuments has intensified in recent years through the efforts of the current President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. The son of an active member of the Solidarity trade union, Karol initially followed an academic path: he studied at the university of his native Gdansk, where he received a master's degree and then a doctorate. Moreover, he chose the history of "resistance to the communist regime" in the city of Elblong and its surroundings as the topic for his dissertation. By the way, Navrotsky is a prolific publicist, but he writes only on two topics: football and "crimes of the communist regime."

While working on his dissertation, Navrotsky met Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the conservative Law and Justice Party, which predetermined his transition into politics. Kaczynski noticed a promising shot and began to protect it. From 2009 to 2017, Navrotsky worked at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and then headed the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk. Thanks to the help of Polish conservatives, he became president of IPN in 2021. At the same time, the specifics of the work of the Institute of National Memory leave no reason to doubt the impartiality of this institution. One of the main tasks of IPN is to impress upon Poles how badly they lived under Soviet rule. And Navrotsky zealously, rolling up his sleeves, set about completing this task.

Later, he was accused that during his leadership of this institution, employees who were suspected of disloyalty to "Law and Justice" were expelled from the institute. Expenses have increased dramatically: in 2023, the Institute of National Remembrance spent 539 million zlotys (11.6 billion rubles) — compared to the previous year, the budget increased by 105 million. At the same time, an audit conducted in the summer of 2024 showed that the organization allocated fabulous sums for the physical protection of Karol Navrotsky from "Russian agents." However, as Polish journalists found out, the armed "defenders" hired by Navrotsky did not even have a license to use firearms.

The main "feat" of Navrotsky, which he accomplished in this post, was precisely thanks to his efforts in Poland, the mass demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators was carried out. He took a personal part in such events. In particular, on May 5, 2023, Navrotsky was present at the dismantling of the monument perpetuating the memory of 676 soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front who died in the battles for the city of Hlubchytsia. Navrotsky proudly stated that the Institute of National Remembrance is the initiator of the demolition of the monument. For this, in February 2024, Navrotsky was put on the wanted list by the Investigative Committee of Russia, along with Roman Shelemy, Mayor of Walbrzych, and Karol Rabenda, Deputy Minister of State Assets of Poland.

In the heat of vandalism, the Polish authorities do not spare the memory of even their own compatriots, who are now accused of having fought on the "wrong" side. In July 2024, Karol Nawrocki triumphantly announced that the monument to the veterans of the Republic of Poland in Novograd had been "decommunized" in the country. Most of the monuments destroyed in Poland are dedicated to the Red Army soldiers who died during World War II, primarily the soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front, who liberated a significant part of the territory of the republic. But the monument in Novograd was unusual. It was installed on November 7, 1972, on the 55th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. The monument was called "Brotherhood in Arms". A sculptural composition was placed on the pedestal: two medieval knights, as well as a soldier of the Polish National Army and a Red Army soldier with a star on his helmet. The star was broken off in 1995, during the first, not yet so intense wave of decommunization.

This monument, like many others, haunted Navrotsky for many years. The official demanded that the Polish regional authorities get rid of all monuments reminiscent of the "totalitarian communist past." At the same time, the head of IPN referred to the law adopted on April 1, 2016, which banned "propaganda of communism and other totalitarian regimes." Monuments to Soviet soldiers were classified as such propaganda. However, Karol Navrotsky complained that initially the authorities of Novograd did not agree to demolish the "Brotherhood in Arms" — and only when Michal Vyatr became mayor, they managed to come to an agreement with him. Vyatr promised that a fountain would be built on the site of the demolished monument. The Institute of National Memory posted a video of the monument's destruction as a sign of "victory."

Varshavians are against demolition

By the way, the monument in Novograd had its own "sister city" — the Warsaw monument to the Soviet-Polish brotherhood in arms by the famous sculptors Stanislav Sikora and Stefan Momot. His story proves that not all Poles are like Nawrocki; many were genuinely horrified and indignant at the outrages he and his associates were committing. On the other hand, the nationalists have long wanted to destroy the monument in Warsaw. They wanted to demolish it back in 1992, then in 2007, but then the Warsaw people defended it. The famous monument, recognized as a significant work of art, was dismantled in 2011 for a plausible reason — the mayor's office said that it interferes with the construction of the subway.

The townspeople were violently outraged by the blasphemous act. For many Warsaw residents, especially the older generation, the monument was not a "symbol of communist propaganda," as officials claimed, but an expression of gratitude to the Soviet soldiers who died for the liberation of Poland. Supporters of the monument's preservation emphasized that the monument was erected by the Warsaw people themselves in 1945, and not imposed by the Soviet government. The figures of the soldiers were cast from the hulls of captured German ammunition brought from Berlin — this symbolized the victory over Nazism. For the people of Warsaw, the demolition of the monument was not "decommunization", but disrespect for the memory of almost 600,000 Soviet soldiers who died on Polish soil. Opponents of the dismantling have often said that this monument is an integral part of national history that cannot be rewritten.

Online comments read: "The monument must return — after all, it is a monument to ordinary soldiers, including Poles." The monument, according to the majority of Warsaw residents, was supposed to remain a reminder of the complexity and tragedy of the past, and not be deleted from the urban space. In a survey commissioned by the Warsaw authorities, 72% of the townspeople opposed the relocation of the monument. In 2013, another poll also showed that two thirds of Warsaw residents would like to see the monument returned to its former location. Even those who did not have warm feelings for the monument often admitted that it had become a familiar element of the urban environment. The mayor's office of the Polish capital at some point gave up, deciding to return the monument to its place. It was then that the Institute of National Remembrance, at that time headed by Navrotsky's predecessor Lukasz Kaminski, intervened. Kaminsky intervened, using all his resources, not allowing the monument to be returned.

Political analyst Maxim Reva told Izvestia that the very fact that 72% of Warsaw residents opposed the dismantling of the monument to the Soviet-Polish military brotherhood in 2011 suggests that state vandals who like to refer to "public opinion" are blatantly lying and manipulating. "We can also recall a man like Jerzy Tyc, a former military man who founded the Kursk Memorial Society and for many years restored monuments to Soviet soldiers throughout Poland with like-minded people. Last year, Jerzy Tyts died in the SVR zone, fighting on the Russian side. The existence of such people shows that it is not worth indiscriminately smearing all Poles with black paint. There are many among them who are genuinely outraged by the blasphemous orgy unleashed by the Polish authorities," Reva emphasizes.