Latvia demolishes Riga’s largest Soviet monument in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine

The Obelisk of Victory in Riga79 meters high and the last Soviet monument of its kind in the capital of Latvia, has been withdrawn this Thursday after more than six hours of work at its base and as a reaction against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

The demolished elements of the monument will be completely destroyed and will be disposed of as rubble, to prevent parts of the statues from being stolen as souvenirs.

A small concentration of people behind the police cordon cheered the collapse of the 250-tonne structure.

repressive occupation

For many Latvians, the monument, a place of celebration for citizens of Russian origin to remember the defeat over Nazi Germany in 1945, represented the repressive Soviet occupation of the Baltic country and not the “liberation” after the fall of the Third Reich.

Russian-speakers, who make up around 37% of the country’s barely two million inhabitants, gather every May 9 in front of the monument to celebrate the Soviet Era Victory Day, while much of the rest of the world celebrates May 8 as Victory in Europe day.

Before the pandemic, May 9 celebrations included choirs singing Soviet wartime songs, speeches by some veterans and the laying of flowers by tens of thousands of mainly Russian residents.

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The monument is made up of two groups of statues, a commemorative plaque with the inscription 1941-1945, the obelisk and a pond.

It was built in the mid-1980s by “contributions” drawn from the payrolls of Latvian companies to build the “Monument to the liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German fascist invaders”, as it was officially called.

The demolition of the monument began on Tuesday, when a work team toppled a statue of three Soviet soldiers, one of them brandishing a machine gun.

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The next day, workers equipped with heavy machinery pulled down the statue of a large female figure of “the Motherland” symbolically saluting Red Army soldiers.

ukrainian war

The status of the Victory Monument has been subject of debate in Latvia since the country regained its independence in 1991. Latvian nationalists felt that the monument should be demolished or at least remodeled to represent a totalitarian occupation and not liberation.

Successive Latvian governments adopted a cautious Line, tolerating the May 9 celebrations and trying not to anger Moscow with something the Russians saw as a symbol of their victory over Nazi Germany.

This changed after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. The Latvian Parliament or Saiem accelerated steps to authorize the demolition of the Riga monument and all other “symbols of Communist and Nazi rule” in Latvia.

A few weeks ago, the government designated 69 Soviet memorials, in addition to the obelisk, for demolition.

Protests and arrests

When preliminary work for the demolition of the monument began on Monday, a small group of protesters met and some five people were arrested for disorderly conduct and for defying the police order.

On Tuesday, isolated protests continued and another 14 people were detained by police for refusing to disperse.

The Mayor of Riga, Martins Stakis, recently stated that the demolition, including the restoration of the area as a park, would cost €2.1 million.