Ewa Ziółkowska
Last [2023] year in Russia, one by one, Polish memorial signs disappeared in unexplained circumstances. Crosses, plaques, and – as in Levashovo on the outskirts of St. Petersburg or in Yakutsk – entire multi-ton stone monuments were removed. This is a Russian response to Poland’s involvement, along with other countries of the so-called collective West, in helping Ukraine attacked by Russia in February 2022. According to Moscow, Poland, by supporting the ‘criminal neo-Nazi regime’ in Kyiv, is pursuing a policy hostile to Russia, which cannot remain without consequences. It should be noted that the Polish-Russian battle over the monuments has been going on for much longer. Not to go any deeper, the most notorious case in recent years was the disappearance in 2020 of two memorial plaques from the former NKVD headquarters in Tver, including one dedicated to the memory of Polish prisoners of war from the Ostashkov camp who were executed in the building.
Killing the memory
The mass removal of Polish memorial signs began in the final months of 2022 in the Tomsk region of Siberia. In November, three memorials there honoring the victims of mass repression were destroyed, and – as all evidence suggests – it was no coincidence that the devastation coincided with Poland’s National Independence Day on 11th November. First, at the Memorial Square of the City of Tomsk, in the centre of the city, a bilingual plaque with the inscription: ‘To the memory of Poles – victims of Stalinist repressions in the Tomsk region in 1930–1956.’ The monument, unveiled on 28th May 2004, was erected on the initiative of local historian, activist and museologist Vasily Khanevich with funds from the Siberian Exiles Association in Warsaw. On the night of 11th–12th November, a memorial plaque disappeared from the facade of the former Polish orphanage in Tomsk for deported children, operational between 1942 and 1944. Also on Independence Day in the village of Bialystok (Belostok, Krivoshinsky district), located approx. 200 km from Tomsk, founded in 1898 by displaced persons from the Grodno and Vilna governorates, a memorial complex dedicated to the Polish inhabitants of the village – victims of shootings as part of the so-called NKVD Polish operation – was destroyed. A tall metal cross was broken off from the memorial, which was unveiled on 21st June 2003, and plaques with the names of the victims and the inscription were torn from the brick stelae: ‘To the memory of the men of the village of Bialystok murdered from Stalinist repression in 1937–1938 – Poland remembers.’ In turn, in December 2022, a cross and a plaque with 33 names of Poles also commemorating victims of the Great Terror were destroyed on the territory of the now-defunct village of Polozovo (district: Molchanovsky, Tomsk region). The inscription on the monument unveiled on 23rd August, 2003 at the former cemetery proclaimed: ‘To the Poles, sons of the land of Tomsk, martyred by the NKVD in 1938 – descendants and compatriots.’
Acts of vandalism escalated in 2023. In January, in the northwest of Russia, in the Republic of Karelia, 20 km from Petrozavodsk, a Catholic cross and a granite plaque with a bilingual inscription were destroyed at the Krasnyy Bor cemetery: ‘1937–1938 To the memory of Poles and people of other nations, victims of repression, who found eternal peace in this land. May they rest in peace.’ This is the site of mass shootings and burials of the time of the Great Terror discovered in 1997 by activists of the Karelian ‘Memorial’. Thanks to the efforts of the local ethnographer and human rights activist Yuri Dmitriyev, it was possible to determine the number of those buried – 1193 and most of their names. In addition to Finns, Karels, Russians, Belarusians and people of other nationalities, four Poles, whose personalities have been identified, also rest there. The monument was erected on the initiative of the Karel Polish community in 2007.
In April, a memorial to Polish and Lithuanian victims of deportation was destroyed using heavy equipment on the site of the former Galashor specposiol [special settlement of Galashor], which existed from 1939 until the 1970s in the north of Perm Krai. The inscription on the monument proclaimed: ‘Here rest Lithuanians and Poles – victims of political repression 1945. We remember you, we love you, we grieve over. Compatriots,’ it also included a list of names. The monument was unveiled in August 2016 with private funds from several Lithuanian individuals.
Monuments ‘illegally erected’ and deemed obstructive
In mid-May, in the settlement of Pivovarikha near Irkutsk at the Memorial Cemetery for Victims of Mass Political Repression, a wooden Lithuanian cross and a Polish monument in the form of a granite stele with an image of a cross, a weeping figure and an inscription were dismantled standing side by side: ‘…great shame before those who are no longer with us, for the deeds of those who brought so much misery… We remember in sorrow… Rest in peace…’ The monument, created on the initiative of the Irkutsk-based Polish Cultural Autonomy organisation ‘Ogniwo,’ with the support of the Polish Consulate General in Irkutsk, was unveiled on 19th September 2015. Next to Pivovarikha in the 1930s, there was an NKVD closed facility where political prisoners were executed. It is estimated that 15,000–17,000 people were murdered there. Pivovarikha is a unique case where the authorities openly admitted to the removal of the two monuments, claiming that they interfered with the cleanup of the site and were erected illegally.
In June, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, monuments – symbolic graves of Poles from Volhynia who were victims of deportations in the 1940s – were vandalised at cemeteries in the villages of Ozyorny and Kostousovo. In Ozyorny, 54 kilometers from Yekaterinburg, a cross and two plaques, including one with the inscription, were torn from an irregular stone stele: ‘Here in the 1940s–1950s, the residents of the village of Ozyorny and Poles deported to the Urals were buried.’ This monument was unveiled on 15th August 1997, in coordination with local authorities, with the participation of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Remembrance and the Office for Veterans and Victims of Repression. In Kostousovo, plaques brought from Poland and the image of the Virgin Mary were removed from the symbolic stone grave, and the statue of Christ was ripped from the cross. Interestingly, the local media stressed that neither the local administration, nor the school, nor the residents of the two villages had anything to do with this vandalism. It is known that in 1940, some 200 repressed Poles were sent to Kostousovo, located 65 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. The monument at the cemetery was erected in 2007 on the initiative of descendants of our compatriots who died there. One of the plaques bore, written in Polish, 66 names of ‘buried by loved ones in 1940–1945.’ Below it was the inscription: ‘The grave also commemorates many others whose names we do not know.’ Both sites are maintained by the local residents and the Yekaterinburg City Social Organisation – Polish Association ‘Polaros.’
They could not ‘rest in peace’
In early June, on the shores of Lake Baikal, in Buryatia, near the village of Mishikha, a monument to Poles – participants in the Baikal Insurrection – was destroyed. A wooden cross was sawn off and a granite plaque with the image of an eagle and a bilingual inscription was torn out: ‘To the memory of the Polish exiles – participants in the Baikal Insurrection killed in battle against the soldiers of tsarist Russia on 12th July 1866. Heroes, rest in peace – we remember you.’ In recent years, residents of the small village have complained to local deputies, claiming that the commemoration has no right to exist due to unfriendly relations between Poland and Russia. The monument, erected on the initiative of the Polish Cultural Association ‘Hope’ in Ulan-Ude, according to a project by the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, was unveiled and consecrated on 13th October 2001 with the participation of local authorities and the administration of the Republic of Buryatia.
On 6th July, a plaque dedicated to ‘Poles – prisoners of Shlisselburg’ was dismantled at the Shlisselburg Fortress, also known as the Oreshek fortress, in the Leningrad Oblast (70 km east of St. Petersburg), a former tsarist political prison. In its place, on the wall of the citadel, opposite the ‘secret house‘, where Walerian Łukasiński and Bronisław Szwarce, among others, were imprisoned, a small plaque appeared with the sign: ‘Object in conservation.’ The fate of the commemorative plaque is unknown. In private conversations, employees mentioned that it was supposedly the result of complaints from some tourists. Both the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture and the management of the St. Petersburg State Museum of History (Peter and Paul Fortress), which oversees the Shlisselburg museum, declined to comment. The Polish plaque was established through the cooperation of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in St. Petersburg. Its unveiling and consecration on 12th September 1998 was performed by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, then head of the Catholic Church in the European part of Russia. Eight names of the most famous Polish prisoners of the fortress were engraved on a black granite slab with inscriptions in Polish and Russian, a cross and a 19th-century eagle.
On 23rd July, it was reported that a monument to the victims of the so-called ‘Polish operation of the NKVD’ disappeared from the Levashovskaya Pustosz Memorial Cemetery. According to official inconsistent, absolutely unbelievable versions, it was either doused in red paint by vandals or damaged by a falling tree and had to undergo restoration work. There was no answer to the questions raised by the St. Petersburg ‘Memorial,’ such as who made such a decision and where the monument is stored. On 19th–23rd August, when the anniversary of the beginning of the ‘Polish operation’ is observed, the cemetery was closed under the pretext of inspecting the tree stand. In front of the gate appeared activists from the so-called Volunteer Rota – a youth ‘patriotic’ organisation trying to disturb those praying there. After the opening of the cemetery, on 28th August, the activists of the St. Petersburg ‘Memorial’ erected a temporary memorial sign on the site left by the Polish monument. Within just four days, the memorial was gone. Two months later, on 30th October, on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression at the site, ‘Memorial’ and the Interierny Theatre erected a ‘A Monument to A Monument’ – a kind of metal openwork installation shaped like the former monument. It lasted for only 24 hours. On Catholic All Saints’ Day, 1st November, there was no trace of it. And once again, the cemetery was visited by savage boys with blatantly mocking signs such as ‘Hands off the monuments.’ The Polish memorial sign in Levashovo was one of the first to be erected after the mass graves in Levashovo were given the status of a memorial cemetery in 1989. A stone sloping cross leaning against a boulder with the inscriptions in Polish and Russian: ‘We forgive and we ask for forgiveness’ was erected in 1993. The idea of a Polish resident of St. Petersburg, enginner Leon Piskorski, was brough to life by the Cultural and Educational Association ‘Polonia’ and the Polish Consulate General in St. Petersburg. Five years later, through the efforts of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, the monument was supplemented by a granite block with the Polish national emblem and a bilingual inscription: ‘To the memory of Poles – victims of mass repressions executed in 1937–1938. Compatriots.’
Also in the summer of 2023 (the exact date is unknown) in the Komi Republic on the site of the former mining settlement of Rudnik near Vorkuta, unknown perpetrators knocked down an 8-meter concrete cross commemorating Polish prisoners of the local gulag. The cross – a monument with a bilingual inscription on it: ‘To the Poles – victims of the Vorkuta labour camps. Those who survived’ was erected on the initiative of the General Management of the ‘Łagiernicy’ (Former Gulag Prisoners) Association – the Home Army soldiers – with the support of the Vorkuta ‘Memorial’ and the local administration. It was located next to mine No. 40 (Vorkutinskaya), where there is a cemetery with Polish graves. The unveiling and concecration ceremony took place on 30th August 1997. Its construction was subsidised by, among others, the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites and the Office for Veterans and Repressed Persons.
So called 19th-century ‘enemies’
The monument in Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic, dedicated to Poles victims of tsarist exile and Stalinist repression, in the form of a complex of five boulders with plaques, disappeared gradually. First, in the spring of 2023, it was fenced off, then covered with blue plastic sheeting. In June, the granite plaques disappeared. The work of destruction was completed on 25th September with the removal of the boulders that are the main element of the memorial. The monument, located near the Salesian house, was unveiled on 9th September 2001. The largest boulder standing centrally bears the image of an eagle and an inscription in three languages: Polish, Yakutian and Russian, which reads: ‘To the memory of Poles – victims of the deportations of the 17th–19th centuries and the mass repressions of the 20th century, as well as outstanding researchers of the Yakutian land.’ The remaining four boulders were dedicated to Aleksander Czekanowski, Jan Czerski, Edward Piekarski and Wacław Sieroszewski, respectively. It should be noted that the project for the monument, prepared more than 20 years ago by the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, was approved by the Yakutsk city administration, which covered half the cost.
On 13th October 2023, in Vladimir at the Prince Vladimir Cemetery, a monument to the victims of Soviet repression was demolished, among other things, with plaques in Polish and Russian in honor of the Chairman of the National Council of Ministers of Underground Poland Jan Stanisław Jankowski with the following words: ‘The late Jan Stanisław Jankowski state activist of the Republic of Poland died at the age of 71, tried for acts he did not commit, died on 13th March 1953 in prison in Vladimir, buried in the local cemetery in an unknown spot.’ Next to it were plaques dedicated to the Archimandrite of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytsky and the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Archbishop Mečislovas Reinys. The monument was erected on the site of a mass grave where victims of the NKVD political repression who died in the nearby Vladimir Central Prison were buried. This act of vandalism was preceded by a local propaganda campaign. The pro-Putin media wrote that: ‘(…) in Vladimir, there are many memorial plaques in honour of the fierce enemies of our country, guilty of the deaths of thousands of our compatriots.’
‘Unknown perpetrators.’ The cross was sawed off by… the weather?
In the vast majority of cases, acts of destruction and at the same time desecration were carried out by ‘unknown perpetrators.’ The monuments were dismantled in secret and taken away in an unknown direction. Who did this and on whose orders nobody knows. Authorities refuse to comment. The police either failed to respond to the reports, took no operational action whatsoever, or, after assessment, concluded that no criminal offense had occurred. Some of the explanations were absurd. For example, in Vorkuta, the local police said that bad weather was the cause of the collapse of a massive concrete cross, evidently cut at its base. In the case of sites under legal protection, due to their museum or memorial nature, such as Shlisselburg or Levashovo – the officially stated reason was that the object had been handed over for conservation. All of this happened because of or with the tacit approval of the local authorities, and, as one might assume, higher-level factors. And it doesn’t matter whether overzealous local authorities or pro-Kremlin activists were behind it. It should be noted that in addition to Polish monuments, the vandalism also affected individual commemorations of other nations: Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Finnish and others.
The whole issue also has a legal aspect. The agreement between the Government of the Republic of Poland and the Government of the Russian Federation on graves and memorials of victims of war and repression of 22nd February 1994 (Journal of Laws 1994 No. 112 item 543) remains in force. In the case of Levashovo, for example, not only international law was violated, but also Russian law. In 2015, Levashovo Memorial Cemetery was granted the status of a national heritage site of regional significance.
A year has gone by, and most places have not returned to their previous state. Fortunately, there are exceptions. In the Siberian town of Bialystok, thanks to the local Catholic parishioners and Vasily Khanevich, the cross has been restored and new plaques with the names of 100 repressed people have been placed. Similarly, in the villages near Yekaterinburg – Ozyorny and Kostousovo – replicas of plaques and religious symbols have returned to their places. In other cases, however, the losses appear to be irreversible. It is important to realise that available knowledge of acts of devastation may be incomplete. Many monuments are located in places far from major centres. News about them comes from local structures of the Memorial Association, independent Russian media, such as the portals ‘Meduza,’ ‘Mediazona,’ as well as from Polish organisations. The erasure of memory sites honouring the repressed Poles is anti-Polish in nature, and at the same time is part of a broader phenomenon – the historical policy of Putin’s Russia: the progressive rehabilitation of Stalinism, idealisation of the USSR, the manipulation of history for political purposes. It is yet another manifestation of imperial ideology. ‘Memorial’ reaction to the events in Tver was: ‘The dismantling of these plaques is not mere vandalism. It is a crime against history, a desecration of memory…’ This criminal practice has recently taken a turn for the worse.
Ewa Ziółkowska – author of many publications on the fate of Poles and Polish traces in the countries of the former USSR, including: Petersburg po polsku [St. Petersburg in Polish] (Warsaw 2011), between 1996 and 2003, the substantive editor of the bulletin of the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom ‘Past and Memory,’ between 2012 and 2018, vice-president of the board of directors of the Foundation ‘Aid to Poles in the East,’ between 2018 and 2022, director of the Polish Institute in St. Petersburg.
Translated by Małgorzata Giełzakowska.