We’re moving a monument, too
RIGA – A small southern Latvian town has attracted the attention of the Russian media in their feeble attempt to show that the Tallinn “syndrome” is taking over the Baltic states.
At the end of 2005, fathers of the town of Bauska, 20 km north of Lithuanian border, decided to move a memorial stone commemorating fallen Red Army soldiers from a local park to the military cemetery. The monumental rock – with no remains nearby – with inscription “To liberators of 1944″ was erected in 1988. And moved this month.
The Russian ambassador Viktor Kalyuzhny told local media that he’s heard about this for the first time on Monday.
“It’s a complete stupidity that caught us off guard,” Kalyuzhny told reporters yesterday.
It’s not the first time the ambassador of Russia place certain appendages into his mouth. A few weeks ago, Kalyuzhny invited our new president Valdis Zatlers to come to Moscow for an official visit, causing an uproar among Latvian diplomats because the invitation didn’t come from Putin.
Regardless of Kalyuzhny’s statements, the Bauska officials insist they consulted the Russian Embassy at the time the decision was made. The city mayor Janis Miculis provided too many details of a visit to Bauska by Russian embassy staff to the Latvian daily Diena, all confirmed by the former editor-in-chief of a local newspaper.
When a reporter asked the Russian ambassador how he could not know what his staff was doing, his response was precious.
“Now you will believe the local government?” he said.
Not surprising however is the fact that the official Moscow is relatively quiet about the incident in the Latvian town of 11,000 people. None of the usual rhetoric of Latvian fascists’ desire to rewrite history can be found in the foreign ministry’s press releases in the last few days.
The scandal around the Bauska rock is that of the Russian Embassy’s making.
At this point, Moscow doesn’t want to make waves before the September ratification of the border treaty with Latvia in the Duma.
Someone should have told Kalyuzhny that.
Photo of the city of Bauska was taken here.
August 19th, 2007 at 8.31
It really is funny. Russians in Latvia never cease to tell us that it was a Soviet occupation NOT a Russian one. Yet when it suits them the Soviets were Russians – otherwise why do Russians (and Putin) get a bee in their bonnet about Soviet memorials? I really would like to know.