Poland demolishes four Red Army monuments
reuters.com/world/europe/poland-demolishes-fo...
reuters.comPosted Oct 28, 2022, 3:29 AM UTC
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reuters.comKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the demolition of the monuments.
"This is a lie, a monstrous lie, because so many citizens of the Soviet Union died liberating Poland," he told reporters when asked about Nawrocki's comments.
"Can you hear the howling? Excellent".
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Liberating from what? Capitalism? Free speech?
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Well, when the Red Army was invading, there was hardly any free speech left. Correct me if Im wrong, but those monuments were about fighting off Nazis.
That being said, changing one murderous slave-master for another murderous slave-master can hardly be called liberation. Westerners might not know this, but death/suffering toll for Soviet Russia against Poland is quite similar to that of Nazi Germany. Moreover, they were de facto rulers of a satellite country for another 45 years, so calling it liberation is as close to truth as calling Nazi Germany's operation Barbarossa a liberation from Soviet occupation, and yet we don't see many monuments for them.
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Fucking nazis. If you missed it their plan was to take over those territories and use Slavic people as slave work force. And they absolutely would do it if they won. Totalitarian Marxist-Leninist regime, however terrible, was distinguishably better than annihilation of a country and enslaving of population.
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Depending on what year we're talking, Stalin was "liberating" Poland from itself.
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Conquest and liberation are not the same thing. Stomping over Poland on the way to Berlin is conquest, not liberation.
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“Liberation” was indeed a side effect, doesn’t change the fact that it technically happened. And again, try to understand it, there is no underlying message, I have no business defending Stalin, but just wanted to correcting nazi apologia that “both are as bad”. Being beaten and robbed is better than being killed.
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LMAO did he actually say that? Dumbass must've forgotten who invaded Poland at the start of WWII
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And i hope more will soon meet the same fate 👏
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to quote a famous ukrainian saying, “what a terribly sad piece of news!”
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Russia invaded Poland 17 days after Hitler attack Poland. Russia and Germany was close ally. So what this drunken moron are talk about?
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Way too late.
We should get rid of this barbarian scars in the '90.
The only monuments that this orcs deserve is this: https://s-trojmiasto.pl/zdj/c/n/9/1188/657x0/1188720-Biala-rzezba-umiejscowiona-na-obleczonej-czerwonym-suknem-konstrukcji-mogla-przywodzic-na-mysl-polska-flage.jpg
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Part of me hopes the government secretly commissions Soviet statues that look like Putin just to tear one down every week and release photos in really dramatic ways (different each time), but not acknowledge that it looks like Putin
Some great world-politics trolling ability
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Going to need to pump those numbers up....
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I do think taking down monuments that glorify soviet union is bad, but Im strongly against trying to erase non soviet polish socialists, many of these people actually thought socialism is the best thing for Poland (remember how our second republic looked like, bunch of pseudonobles, ethnic tensions, poor villages, no wonder many turned to socialism) and actually fought and died for Poland, many of these people were letter persecuted by the soviet backed communist rule. Not every socialist that contributed to Polish history was a red army soldier that wanted everyone to speak russian. Important thing that is kept out of schools.
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I agree. some of those monuments have high artistic/historical value. they should be in a museum where they don’t glorify oppression
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About time
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There is a Red Army cemetery in Wrocław with T-34 tanks but it hasn’t been demolished yet.
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Monuments can fall, but don't fuck with cementaries.
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They could remove the guns. I've never understood why it was deemed appropriate to put guns on the graves of men who probably didn't want to have to fight in the first place and were then killed... by guns.
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Soviet Russians raped and stole much like modern Russians rape and steal in Ukraine. Russians are trash and need to be shunned by all modern societies.
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Those statues shuldnt be demolished-they should be moved to museums to remind us that once we were under authoritarian communist regime brought here by russian tanks with drunk crews willing to kill rape and steal from Polish citizens
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To be honest, I've always been in two minds about it.
Do these monuments honour the Soviet Union, which was a foreign power occupying Poland? Yes.
Was the Red Army, with all of its crimes and wrongs, the force that saved millions of Poles from slave labour for the Reich or outright murder in the camps? Also yes.
The sacrifice of the Red Army's soldiers deserves recognition. And contrary to the Kremlin's opinion, this was not an army of Russians, but of Ukrainians, Belarussians, Kazakhs, Buryats, Armenians, Georgians and many more as well, with its commanders being similarly diverse in their nationalities. This is a part of a shared cultural heritage that is simply too large to dismiss as "Russian, therefore bad"
Sincerely, from a person who's already been called a "banderite fascist" and "Putin apologist" for this take.
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Being the lesser of 2 evils still makes you evil.
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Red Army did not "liberate" Poland. It was more like "new management" kind of thing.
Not to mention USSR attacked Poland in September 1939 alongside German Reich.
I disagree with destroying the monuments, though. They hold historical value.
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You can't be intellectually honest with yourself and put a "=" mark between the German occupation and the post-war People's Republic.
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It was definitely better than occupation by Nazi Germany, which planned extermination of most of Slavic population, but it does not mean Poland became independent after Soviet "liberation".
Poland became a puppet state of USSR, which was by all means a totalitarian state.
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I'm from Lubelskie, most of my family (grandma, aunties and uncles) always told me that they experienced worse treatment from the Soviets and their officers than their nice Nazi friends.
To even think with all the unhumane treatment by the Soviets, that they "saved" Poland is just laughable. They TRIED to kill the Polish elite and anyone who could be their enemy just so the rest of the population were made slaves to work for the USSR
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No matter what any ideologue says, communism is absolutely a preferable alternative to death, especially when by death we mean an entire government entity dedicated to killing Poles.
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Are you not aware of the forced slave labor and outright murder of Poles (including women and children) who were sent to Siberian gulags by these so called “liberators”? Over 1.5 million were deported and had their land, property, and businesses confiscated. The majority never returned. What about the mass execution of 22,000 Polish soldiers and prisoners of war? Fuck the Red Army and their monuments. They sacrificed nothing for Poland. It was all for Russia and that’s where they should be commemorated.
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Tell the approximately seven million Ukrainians, the 1.5 million Kazakhs or the about 1.3 million Belarussians that served in the Red Army during World War 2 that they "sacrificed all for Russia".
This is exactly what you fail to comprehend, the fact that the Red Army's ranks were a conglomerate of nationalities and that if not for them – whatever you think of the Soviet Union, I personally despise it – we'd not be alive right now.
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What exactly is your argument here? Are you essentially saying that Poland should be grateful to the Red Army and therefore commemorate it because there were Ukrainians, Kazakhs, and Belarusians serving in it? They were not fighting for Poland, they were invading it for Stalin.
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I sam saying we shouldn't desecrate war memorials commemorating long-dead conscripts as a way to tell Russia to fuck off as that is absurdly petty.
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Destroying monuments is wrong, they should create museum of occupation of Poland and move them there.
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I see what you mean. Always thought we shouldn't take down cementaries but the monuments should go. There's massive cementary in my city and most of "soldiers" there are 16 - 18 years old. Were they army of any kind? Or just cannon fodder used to level Odra? I was glad to see red army symbols taken down from city centre, but still going to put some lights on those graves.
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In german majority lands that were given to Poland after ww2 most german cementaries were destroyed, in my town there's a pretty big park created on old german cementary that was covered with dirt.
Point is, disrespecting graves is always an awful thing to do. Most people on this planet for entirety of human history dont care about ideologies etc they either have sheep mentality or are forced to do something. I have no love for red army nor do I have it for current russian army but its just history repeating itself, people that think they cant do anything just following the orders.
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Living in Szczecin you get not only lots of parks that were cemeteries, but also a load of small architecture - walls, sidewalks made of old German tombstones. Some of them still have names visible. The unspoken hate is changing a bit - as some of city activists are bringing people from the past to memory, and those 19'th century guys were quite colourful bunch, but still there are many idiots who would level any historical site to just not admit that the city was German for ages. There was a discussion about red army cementaries in region and you could see that the loudest speakers didn't know anything about history. Still - if we are to take monuments off the public space - we should start some museums to gather them and explain - why in some villages those were put up by people themselves and with true happiness, why in some places there was administrative obligation to honor red army and it was followed with hate. Taking those down without saying why we waited so long with it is irrational and irresponsible.
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Was the Red Army, with all of its crimes and wrongs, the force that saved millions of Poles from slave labour for the Reich or outright murder in the camps? Also yes.
No? They are doing 1:1 of what are they doing in Ukraine right now. Raping, stealing, murdering. First hand from grandma.
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monuments should be saved in museums for their artistic/historical value. red army cemeteries should be untouched. most of those buried there were young men forced to fight by the nkwd
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Are they going to demolish the Palace of Culture aswell? The building exteriors still carry stalin and lenin names they say.
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I hope not. It was paid with our own money.
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When the warsaws palace of culture? Pleaaaaase
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rolls eyes
Nobody forgot how the building came to be, but for a long time now it is no longer considered as symbol of soviet domination (as Stalin intended, so fuck his intentions)- we reclaimed the building from it's roots a long time ago and made it part of our pop-culture and city. It is polish right-wing pipe dream for some reason though, they cannot move on and understand the building is ours, not soviet now. The ultimate irony, that they are the ones to keep the original purpose of the building alive, Stalin lives in their head rent-free.
And what is most important: at this stage not only counter-productive, but also logistically not feasible. it is not a sculpture or monument that serves no purpose. Hundreds of millions just in deconstruction efforts (on top of costs of Warsaw center being paralyzed for a long time), 6-7 thousand people who work there displaced along with the hundreds of institutions which are housed there. And that is just the few major issues.
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Sure. I just hate how it looks like :D. Also would be awesome to have something like central park there. I think there was a project like that. Also I dont think it would be such a problem to dismantle it, there is a lot of space around to accommodate that.
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Also would be awesome to have something like central park there. I think there was a project like that.
There is already one around it. If only that huge ugly parking lot would be changed into park terrain + some of concrete all around would be turned into green spaces - you pretty much have your wish.
Also I dont think it would be such a problem to dismantle it, there is a lot of space around to accommodate that.
xDD this is how I know you really have no idea what you are talking about or/and do not live in Warsaw so have o concept on how much space is around vs the building size - though it is usually expected from people advocating destroying Pekin. Let me just tell you - "Na chłopski rozum" is not a good tool to judge stuff.
There were already rough calculations done by bloggers, it is ~260 000 tons of debris (~160000 m3) from concrete used to build it, alone. Typical dumper truck has like 20m3, so as very big numbers do not wake imagination - imagine 8000 trucks of debris (in a perfect world where it all perfectly fits and trucks leave full). Again, from concrete/bricks alone. Not to mention it would have to be blown up, in the very centre of Capital. With 2 subway lines in direct vicinity and important train route also almost directly underneath (tunel średnicowy).
według opinii specjalistów od wyburzeń, nie da się go rozebrać bez użycia materiałów wybuchowych. Co z powodu bezpośredniego sąsiedztwa dwóch linii metra i licznych domów i bloków mieszkalnych, nie wchodzi w rachubę.
Not to mention the cost, not to mention paralysis of the entire city, etc etc.
To be honest - I would start with Kraków levelling entire Nowa Huta first (another communist propaganda project, also ugly and would nicely fit a park). Or demolishing Malbork castle (a symbol of foreign invaders!). Or all the steelworks, powerplants, docks, public buildings that were built in name of Stalin and Lenin in Poland.
Or maybe instead - we don't.
EDIT: I totally forgot about option 3, the easy and cheap one: Put a cross on top of it, name it now "Pałac Kultury i Nauki im. Jana Pawła II" and everyone at right will be happy.
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Let’s piss them off with a slow trickle. How about one per week? We should be able to get years of entertaining Peskov quotes out of that.
I'm all for this 👏🤩
Omg, I love this idea. Before the war, I was always feeling pissed off whenever I saw some Soviet monuments around. Knowing how much suffering they caused fo Polish people.