Prague statue take-down: Degradation of Morality

By Andrey Kochetov

In recent years, an epidemic has swept across Eastern Europe. The epidemic of complete unconsciousness of pro-government elites. The unconsciousness of their own history. The Baltic countries for a long time, out of hatred of their Soviet past, made liquid goods for which Old Europe paid with great generosity and continues to pay those same thirty pieces of silver to the governments of these countries. (Europe is ready to spend money to encourage Baltic governments to say many dirty things about the Soviet past. It is very easy money. No need to produce anything. Just make a show in the informational field. That is all. And they are very glad to get this easy money.) 

But Bulgaria and Poland were relatively recently affected by this disease. We all followed the mass demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers in these countries. This was the result of the painstaking and lengthy work of Western propaganda aimed at completely erasing from the human memory the feats of the Soviet soldier [during World War II]. There are well-known data on the losses of the Red Army in the territory of Eastern Europe:

• in Poland - 600,212 people;
• in Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people;
• in Hungary - 140,004 people;
• in Germany - 101,961 people;
• in Romania - 68,993 people;
• in Austria - 26,006 people;
• in Yugoslavia - 7,995 people;
• in Norway - 3,436 people;
• in Bulgaria - 977 people.

The ashes of all these soldiers rest in the territory of the countries for whose freedom they gave their lives. And we, the heirs of the Victory soldiers, quite reasonably expected respect and dignity for the graves and monuments of fallen heroes, as the generally accepted laws of human morality suggest.

But no! Contrary to common sense and morality, egregious acts of vandalism have become the norm for the current descendants of the inhabitants of countries liberated by Soviet soldiers from [Nazi] fascism.

With alarm and indignation, we all watched with what frenzy the Polish authorities rushed to destroy the monuments. How bashfully, the Bulgarian authorities did not see anything reprehensible in numerous acts of vandalism over monuments to the soldiers of the Red Army.

But the Prague [in Czech Republic] authorities distinguished themselves with particular cynicism, which at the time of hype in the information field about the situation with the coronavirus, dismantled the monument to Marshal of the Soviet Union, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Ivan Stepanovich Konev. And if the Soviet ranks and awards may not be interesting to the modern Czech inhabitant, then the fact that it was Marshal Konev who commanded the Prague offensive operation in May 1945, during which not only was liberated but also saved Prague, they simply must know. It was Marshal Konev who defeated the remnants of the regular Wehrmacht troops and put the long-awaited point in the most bloody war of the past century.

Residents of liberated Prague then appreciated the merits of Marshall, conferring on him the title of “Honorary Citizen of Prague”. How can the descendants of these very liberated inhabitants allow the authorities of Prague to demolish the monument to the commander-liberator on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory? How can we evaluate the actions of the headman of the Prague-6 district, Ondrzej Kolář, who directed the demolition of the monument?

The special cynicism of his phrase is noteworthy: “We dismantled it, because the marshal did not have a mask." In our opinion, this is a complete degradation of morality. Especially against the background of the recent history with masks that China sent to Italy, and the Czech Republic calmly appropriated these masks, clearly demonstrating to the whole world the “unbreakable unity of the European Union”.

I really want to believe that the leadership of the Russian Federation will not leave unnoticed the fact of flagrant vandalism on the part of the authorities of the city of Prague, and also find a way to “note” directly the special cynicism of Ondrej Kolář. After all, the Russians do not abandon their own. And the slogan: "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten!" still remains the property of our national memory.

~ Andrey Kochetov is a labor leader living in the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.  During my visit last October he arranged a tour of the region for me and a couple of other visitors from the west.  The Donbass region (near the Russian border) is under constant attack by the puppet government now in control of Ukraine after the US orchestrated coup d'etat in 2014.