Monument to the repressed demolished in Tomsk: among them were Poles deported from Belarus, as well as Belarusians forced to change their nationality
In Russian Tomsk, the "Stone of Sorrow" and other memorials to victims of political repression have been dismantled. The destruction of monuments directly affects the history of Belarus: among the Poles exiled to Siberia were a large number of inhabitants of Belarusian lands, as well as ethnic Belarusians whom the NKVD forced to register as Poles to fulfill repressive plans.
"Stone of Sorrow" in Tomsk's Memory Square before its destruction. Photo: vtomske.ru
In Memory Square, workers removed stones installed in honor of repressed Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, Estonians, and Kalmyks. The area was fenced off, and the actual dismantling of the entire square began, including benches and streetlights.
The Tomsk City Hall explained the destruction of the memorial complex by "the threat of a garage collapsing," which is located on the slope of a ravine half a hundred meters from the monuments. Officials stated that the small architectural forms have been transferred for "responsible storage" until a slope reinforcement project is developed. However, the administration soon deleted this explanatory post from its Telegram channel. According to eyewitnesses, the fenced area is now guarded by police who prohibit passersby from taking photos.
Distance from the "Stone of Sorrow" to the garages, whose collapse was stated by local authorities as the reason for the dismantling of the entire memorial complex. Photo from social media
The site of the memorial after its demolition. Photo: 7x7
Former political prisoner and ex-head of Navalny's headquarters in Tomsk, Ksenia Fadeeva, recalled that Memory Square is the territory of the former NKVD prison. During excavations, pits characteristic of mass graves were found there.
Fadeeva called the dismantling an attempt to erase the memory of the crimes of Soviet power, carried out by "direct heirs of the executioners of the past." The memorial and the foundation stone had been on this site since 1989 and 1992, respectively, and were created with citizen donations.
The monument to the memory of Poles – victims of Stalinist repressions, located in Memory Square, was repeatedly vandalized, and has now been demolished along with other monuments. Photo: Yandex Maps
The destroyed Polish memorial is closely linked to events in Belarus. In the 1930s, and later in 1940—1941 after the annexation of Western Belarus, tens of thousands of local Poles were forcibly deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Additionally, the monument is dedicated to the victims of the so-called "Polish operation" of the NKVD in 1937—1938 – the largest of the national operations of the Great Terror.
As archival documents testify, during its conduct, investigators massively forced arrested Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians to falsely confess to being Poles. This was done solely to fulfill quotas for repressions based on nationality, handed down from above.
The site of the memorial after its demolition. Photo: "Govorit NeMoskva"
The site of the memorial after its demolition. Photo: "Govorit NeMoskva"
The dismantling in Tomsk is part of a nationwide trend to destroy historical memory of repressions. The process is simultaneously underway in dozens of Russian regions: monuments to Poles and Lithuanians previously disappeared in the Irkutsk, Sverdlovsk regions, Karelia, Yakutia, Perm Krai, and the Komi Republic. Local authorities most often cite unknown vandals or "illegal installation" of plaques.
Last week, an exhibition at the Museum of GULAG History was dismantled in Moscow. In the Smolensk region, on the territory of the "Katyn" memorial (the site of the mass execution of Polish officers by NKVD staff), Russian authorities opened a traveling exhibition "Ten Centuries of Polish Russophobia." Simultaneously, State Duma deputies are putting forward initiatives to remove the Solovetsky Stone from Lubyanka Square in the Russian capital.
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им эти памятники как кость в горле.