Ukraine’s Communists are condemning what they call “state vandalism” as authorities in the city of Lviv announced their decision to dismantle the city’s Monument of Glory, a memorial to Red Army soldiers who died fighting the Nazi invasion.
Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko denounced the act as “moral terrorism” and called it “a crime against the memory of the soldiers of the Red Army, a slap in the face of the international community and to all members of the anti-Hitler alliance.”
Ukrainian authorities have dismantled thousands of Soviet-era monuments and renamed hundreds of streets since the fascist-backed “Maidan” coup of 2014. Lviv’s Monument of Glory had survived so far because the Institute of National Remembrance, an institution tasked with “de-communization,” said it was not a specifically communist symbol but one commemorating the defeat of the Nazis.
But neo-Nazis have repeatedly vandalized the monument. The city authorities’ claim that it is unstable and dangerous was slammed as “hypocritical” by the Communist Party, which pointed out that they plan to relocate the monument to the anti-communist “Territory of Terror” museum.
More than 27 million Soviet citizens—including at least nine million Ukrainians—lost their lives in the struggle against Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Morning Star
CONTRIBUTOR
Comments