The Prague Post Online: News: A monumental fight

http://www.aaaradiotaxi.cz/index.php?xSET=lang&xLANG=2

July 20th, 2008

Endowment Fund Book of Lists ONLINE Reservations Classifieds Subscriptions

Real Estate Prague Prague Rentals Prague Apartments Prague Art & Antiques

A monumental fight

Brno war memorial sparks a passionate clash over the legacy of Soviet symbols

April 16th, 2008 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Supporters of restoring the hammer and sickle to the monument honored fallen soldiers by wearing Soviet and other period uniforms. enlarge

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Deputy Mayor René Pelán, center, publicly denounced the emblem. enlarge

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Pelán's sympathizers demonstrated in communist riot police gear. enlarge

COURTESY PHOTO

Those calling for the restoration of the hammer and sickle to the war memorial faced off with opponents of communism April 10. enlarge

BRNO, SOUTH MORAVIA

The push to erase the country’s communist history by renaming streets and landmarks was most urgent immediately after the 1989 fall of the regime. But discussion about the role of Soviet symbols in modern Czech society remains very much alive in Brno, south Moravia, where debate is ongoing over a hammer and sickle on a war memorial commemorating 326 Red Army soldiers killed while liberating Brno–Královo Pole. On April 10, a rally at the site attended by supporters and opponents of the emblem proved just how heated that debate remains.

The hammer and sickle had been repeatedly removed from the Brno monument, most recently in June 2007, when it was personally sanded off by district Deputy Mayor René Pelán, two days before the memorial was to be unveiled after a reconstruction.

When the city had still not replaced the emblem by 2008, concerned citizens founded an association called the Protection of Memorials to Liberators of 1945 in February to urge officials to act. The group’s most recent effort to honor the fallen soldiers and prompt the city to restore the emblem was last week’s rally.

The demonstration of about 150 supporters of the emblem started with an honor guard in old Soviet uniforms. Speakers then evoked memories of a bygone era. Pensioner Marie Veselá, an association member, delivered a poem she’d written.

“I charge you today / In the name of the dead and the living / What would your heart say / If others took down / Your cross, your chalice, or symbol of the crescent moon,” she recited.

But the demonstration soon turned into a tragicomedy when the program was disrupted by roughly 50 opponents of communism. Pelán, who was fined for removing the emblem and is still awaiting a full criminal investigation, was among the opponents present.

“I admit to having removed the hammer and sickle, but I don’t think I committed a crime by doing so,” he said.

Some opponents wore old uniforms of the communist police special action unit that had become infamous for acting against protesters in November 1989. These opponents jangled their keys at the assembled supporters, just as people did on Wenceslas Square in 1989 when protests toppled the communist regime. They also shouted so much that organizers had to call on police to ensure the peacefulness of proceedings.

Although Mayor Ivan Kopečný spoke, he declined to take sides or add to his brief statement.

“This should be a place for remembrance and not debate,” he said. “We should simply honor those who lost their lives with a minute of silence.”

Pelán, however, was more candid, publicly commenting, “I believe that the symbols that I took down are those of the totalitarian communist regime and have no place in the public. They should be remembered only in museums and textbooks so that we never forget what happened.” The hour-long rally ended with association member and organizer Karel Formánek — who had rained fire and brimstone throughout the proceedings — remarking, “I promise to wake up the dead soldiers of the Red Army that lie here, and we will march to the next meeting of the city council with machine guns and remind our councilors of their duty!”

Long-standing debate

The monument’s history started in 1946 when a grateful, still communist country erected it at the spot of a mass grave for soldiers of the Red Army and Romanian Royal Army who had fallen while fighting off a German attack. When it was inaugurated, the honor guard included both a French and Russian legionary.

The original monument included a hammer and sickle and a five-point star, which can still be seen at the top. A wooden Russian Orthodox cross was also erected at the burial site and survived decades of communist attempts to remove every trace of religion from daily life.

“We are behaving worse than communists when we take down symbols for which these men fought and died,” Veterans’ Society Chairman Miloslav Alexej Fryščok pointed out at the rally. “We promised to be tolerant and should stop and think about what that actually means.”

In the years following the Velvet Revolution, reminders of communism were systematically removed. It was during that early post-revolution period, in 1990, that the hammer and sickle on the Královo Pole monument first disappeared, allegedly having been removed by an acquaintance of Pelán’s. Its absence went unnoticed for 16 years, until June 2006, when the local Russian consulate inspected the site, and released a statement calling the emblem’s removal, “a deliberate disgrace of the Red Army and an attempt to rewrite history.”

After intervention from the Czech Foreign Affairs Ministry, the site was renovated last spring and the hammer and sickle were restored in June — only to be removed by Pelán.

The Brno City Council still plans to replace the emblem, and is currently developing a plan for its reconstruction. But the project is a long time in coming as it must also be reviewed by interested parties such as the Defense Ministry and the Russian Embassy. “If all goes well, the reconstruction could be finished sometime next year,” said Pavel Žára, spokesman for the city of Brno.

Slippery slope

The resolution of the hammer and sickle issue has been complicated by a pair of conflicting laws. On one hand, the Czech Republic is bound by a treaty with the Russian Federation regarding war graves that requires each country to respect the nationality and religions of the other. On the other hand, the hammer and sickle is a symbol of a totalitarian regime, the display of which is banned by a national law forbidding the support or propagation of movements that restrict human rights and freedom (although the law does not specifically name communism).

“The discussion about communism and its symbols should never dishonor those people who participated in the liberation of Czechoslovakia,” Fryščok said. According to him, war graves are always marked with the national symbol even if the state in question no longer exists. Thus Czechoslovak soldiers who died during the two world wars still have the Czechoslovak coat of arms on their graves. Similarly, Fryščok says, graves of the Red Army soldiers should be marked with the Soviet coat of arms, which included the hammer and sickle.

“Where will the fight against the hammer and sickle stop?” Fryščok asked. “Will we try to tear down the Austrian coat of arms next?”

The Austrian coat of arms was modified after World War II so that the double-headed eagle holds a hammer and a sickle in its claws as a show of gratitude to the Soviet Union for liberating Europe from the Nazis. If a law banning the hammer and the sickle were passed, Fryščok pointed out, the Austrian Embassy would suddenly be illegal in the Czech Republic.

Be the first to add a comment!

Most e-mailed articles
Expanding horizons Baroque Manson The great ice age returns

Related articles
Former prisoners revisit labor sites Communist Youth defends rights Draci sweeps finals Seeing red Seven Days

Most visited in Book of Lists

The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.