Many Soviet monuments could still be demolished in Latvia

A few dozen meters from the fence of the US Embassy, on the lawn of the former Riga Music Boarding School, sits the bust of communist Otomārs Oškalns. Riga is full of Soviet monuments whose usefulness in the urban environment is no less questionable than that of the Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from German Fascist Invaders.

The former Riga Music Boarding School is now home to the Riga Waldorf School. On the lawn of the courtyard, there are several small sculptures that have been left here as a legacy of Soviet times. But only one of them has an explanatory sign. Aigars Snikus took care of it. In the old days, he attended the boarding school - up to grade 8. Recently, he came to walk around the schoolyard, to see how the great masters - Ķempe, Barons, mother's images - were doing. In Soviet times, there were even more monuments, but they were eventually removed - obviously, as the first bronze and metal forgings. But there are still a dozen left, and among them is old Otomārs Oškalns - sitting proudly. No one else even thought that he would not belong in the educational establishment of free Latvia. So at least now there is an explanatory sign so that the little children know what an evil man they are running around. On the plywood board, it says: Otomārs Oškalns, supporter of the Soviet power - commander of a partisan/terrorist unit. Riga used to have a railway station named after this Soviet communist, and there was also a bridge. Now they have been renamed, but the bust remains. While running from one school block to another, Neatkarīgā spoke to a teacher. But neither did she know that the man in the hat was a ruthless Red Partisan, nor did she notice the explanatory plaque that had appeared out of nowhere.

300+ Soviet monuments

A few years ago, Neatkarīgā asked the Committee of the Brethren's Cemetery for a LIST of Soviet monuments, which are not connected with burials and therefore do not enjoy such intensive care and protection from the Embassy of the Russian Federation. It is much easier to crush them or hide them away from the public eye somewhere deep in museums or forests. The list includes more than 300 different artefacts of Soviet power - monuments, memorials, stones, plaques, concrete formations. Dedicated to the Red Army, partisans, certain episodes of the war, important party members. The Otomārs Oškalns bust in Riga is not on this list, but 16 other monuments are registered in the capital, and the "Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from German Fascist Invaders" is certainly the most visible, both literally and figuratively.

Ogre has already annoyed the Kremlin

Whether or not monuments to a hostile ideology are dismantled depends on the political will of the government or municipality in question. The government as a whole has not shown such will so far. However, the municipality of Ogre has just demonstrated it by dismantling a stone praising the Soviet army for liberating the town of Madliena from German fascist invaders. Retirement also awaits other Soviet artefacts in Ogre municipality that do not have Red Army bones under them. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation reacted to the dismantling of the monument with a dramatic statement by its official representative, Maria Zakharova. Basically, it's business as usual - we are outraged, it's a flagrant case, Nazism is being glorified, etc. The most remarkable paragraph is at the end of the statement, after the reference to the 1994 agreement on the mutual care of memorial buildings:

"Obviously, this wild, unjustifiable move will have an extremely negative impact on the entire Russian-Latvian relations, including Latvian memorial activities on Russian territory."

Riga does not review monuments

In principle, this is a threat - we will now do the same with your monuments. But there is not much to fear from this threat, because there are very few Latvian monuments in Russia, and Russia has so far put all possible obstacles in the way of their care and the creation of new memorials. So, if Ogre has already annoyed Russia, there is no longer any argument why other artefacts of the occupation regime should not also disappear from the face of the earth, or at least from the public open space in Latvian municipalities. Whether it is Otomārs Oškalns on the lawn of the Riga Waldorf School or the "Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders". There is a war going on, and in war there is no place for some kind of misunderstood tolerance. So far, however, the city administration has not ordered a review of the list of monuments to the occupation regime. Gunārs Nāgels, Director of the Riga Monuments Agency, told Neatkarīgā that there have been some complaints from residents about some of the monuments in Riga, but "nothing has been done in that direction. The Agency's job is to take care of monuments, not to erect or demolish them." Asked for his personal opinion on what to do with the Soviet ideological heritage, Nāgels suggests that those monuments might need some explanation. And so those explanations have been talked about for ten years now.

The extreme radicals are preparing for May 9

The Oškalns bust in front of the US Embassy now has an explanatory sign, thanks to a civic initiative by a Riga resident. Near Pārdaugava, the Riga City Council has put up billboards with Ukrainian war scenes - so that it is clear to all who these "liberators" really are. That both the Red Army in Latvia then and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine now are simply occupiers. Of course, explanations are good - both small veneer signs and large-format photographs. For the ultra-radical political organization Latvian Russian Union (Latvijas Krievu savienība) and other pro-Kremlin activists, they are already spoiling the mood, and will probably spoil it even more on May 9 - the day of commemoration of the victims of the Ukrainian war, when the traditional event honoring the Red Army of occupation will take place in Uzvaras Park, with the laying of flowers and the subsequent unapproved gathering in the "night guard" organized by Latvian Russian Union for a demonstration of the unity of Russian world.

30 years and more after independence, Latvia has more than 300 monuments commemorating the Soviet occupation and events bringing together supporters of the Kremlin's policies.

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