Tomsk memorial removed overnight
Residents of Tomsk discovered on Sunday that a memorial complex commemorating people executed by the Soviet secret police had been dismantled overnight. The site included prominent elements such as a memorial arch and a monument referred to locally as the "Stone of Grief." The complex stood on ground believed to be a mass grave where victims of the NKVD - the Soviet-era secret police - were shot. A former NKVD prison building, now operating as a museum, overlooks the area.
The removal drew immediate condemnation from the embassies of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which issued a joint protest to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday. In their statement the four missions said they viewed the action as a "barbaric act" and demanded restoration of the memorial in Tomsk.
The embassy statement added that memorial stones dedicated to citizens of those countries who were murdered during Stalin's 1937-38 "Great Terror" had also been taken away. The communique stressed the importance of preserving the memory of victims so that such crimes are not repeated, saying: "It’s not possible to destroy memory!"
Official explanations and silence
Local authorities in Tomsk initially provided an explanation in a post from the mayor’s office, saying the removal was undertaken after an anonymous resident warned that a nearby garage, built on a slope, might collapse. That explanation was subsequently deleted from the office’s communications, and city officials have declined to provide further comment since the removal.
The lack of a sustained, transparent justification for dismantling the memorial has contributed to international concern and the formal protest lodged by the four European embassies.
Context within recent legal and political moves
Observers have linked the Tomsk incident to a broader set of developments in Russia that affect how the past is publicly remembered. Earlier this month, Russia's Supreme Court ruled to classify Memorial - the human rights organization founded in the late 1980s that documents political repression in the Soviet Union - as an "extremist" movement. The court stated that Memorial was "anti-Russian in nature" and engaged in activities it described as "eroding historical, cultural, spiritual, and moral values." Memorial rejected those characterizations. The designation has effectively banned the group's activity inside Russia.
Separately, a prominent nationalist lawmaker, Andrei Lugovoi, made a public request for authorities to review the legality of the Solovetsky Stone in central Moscow, a major monument to victims of Stalin-era repression. Lugovoi criticized the monument for having become an annual rallying point for Western ambassadors, whom he accused of using visits there to divide Russians and to reinforce what he casts as unfair criticism of current authorities.
Other institutional changes have continued apace. Moscow's principal museum dedicated to the Gulag - the extensive system of Soviet-era prison and forced labor camps - is being refocused as a museum that will concentrate on crimes committed by Nazi Germany against Soviet citizens during World War Two. In addition, a presidential decree this week renamed the academy of the FSB security service after Felix Dzerzhinsky, who founded the Soviet secret police and played a central role in the Red Terror.
Scale of historical repression cited in dedication
The Tomsk memorial complex had been dedicated to people killed at different points in Soviet history, including those who perished during the 1937-38 "Great Terror." Conservative official estimates cited in the dedication put the number of people executed during that period at nearly 700,000.
The removal of memorial stones and the dismantling of the Tomsk complex therefore touch on the commemoration of both local victims and foreign nationals who died under Soviet repression, which is why the embassies of the four European countries raised formal objections.
International and domestic tensions
Moscow has in turn criticized what it describes as the immoral destruction of Soviet army monuments in Poland and the three Baltic states - which Russia says were liberated from Nazi Germany by the Red Army at great cost. The four countries that protested the Tomsk removal - Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia - consider the presence of Red Army forces after World War Two as an occupation rather than liberation. The differing perspectives on Soviet-era history underscore the diplomatic friction reflected in the recent complaint about Tomsk.
At present, the Russian Foreign Ministry has not issued an immediate comment on the joint embassy statement protesting the Tomsk removal.