Tension Increases Over Soviet Monument In Brno

Kralovo Pole in Brno is dealing with a delicate matter at the moment. The district has a large memorial to Soviet soldiers who fell in April 1945 while liberating the city from Nazi rule and were buried there. The memorial displayed Soviet symbols - the five-pointed star and the hammer and sickle - ever since it was erected in 1946. The symbols were removed in the early 1990s, but now the star has returned.

The monument in question is in fact a military burial site where, according to the inscription in Cyrillic, 326 soldiers of the Red Army were interred. The monument was erected in May 1946 and decorated with a hammer and sickle on the front and a five-pointed red star on top. These emblems, commonly seen as representing communism, were removed after 1989, but the star returned last year after pressure from the Russian General Consulate in Brno.

Deputy Mayor of Kralovo Pole Rene Pelan says he understands the attitude of the Russians. "They are very sensitive about it now, but I wish they would understand that nobody wants to disrespect the burials sites or the memorials to the liberators of Brno, but rather start a debate of the form and appearance of the monument. I suggested removing the monument and installing a boulder with the inscription 'To all victims of WWII'. It is still debated whether there are only Red Army soldiers in the grave, or maybe some Germans, or Rumanians, or even civilians. So that text that only celebrates the Red Army, might not be completely true."

This proposition met with little appreciation from the Russian Consulate. Alexei Kolmakov, attaché to the General Consulate, would not comment on the matter, but a press release from 22nd May 2007 maintained that any effort to "distort the truth and to libel the Red Army" and any destruction or profanation of the monuments to Soviet soldiers would be seen by the Russians as "adversary".

Not that the Soviets Russians would ever dream of distorting the truth.