Majority of Poles oppose relocation of Russian memorials

[Crvena zvezda]

Majority of Poles oppose relocation of Russian memorials

Warsaw (dpa) - A majority of Poles oppose government plans to relocate Soviet-era monuments, according to an opinion poll published Friday by conservative daily Rzeczpospolita.

Just 30 per cent of those polled back the removal of memorials to the Red Army from the Polish streetscape, with 60 per cent expressing the opinion that they should stay in place.

Older respondents in particular belonging to wartime or immediate post-war generations were insistent that the monuments to Soviet soldiers should stay as they are, the newspaper said.

"They were simple people, not political commissioners," one Warsaw resident was quoted as saying. Opposition lawmaker Tadeusz Iwinski of the Democratic Left (SLD) party meanwhile said the poll results proved that the Polish people were set against the "instrumentalization" of history.

The national-conservative government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski is preparing a draft law on national monuments which would see the removal of any symbols from the Nazi or Soviet eras and the renaming of certain streets.

The bill is expected to come before the Polish parliament before the end of May. Russia has protested against the proposed law, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaking of an attempt "to rewrite history."

In Estonia in April there was mass rioting by Russian inhabitants following the relocation of a Soviet World War II memorial and the remains of 12 soldiers buried underneath it from central Tallinn to a war cemetery.

One Russian citizen died of knife wounds in the disturbances and dozens of people were injured in the rioting in the Estonian capital.

http://www.eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=8009