Of 25 Memorials to Victims of Soviet Power Destroyed Since 2022, 21 were Devoted to Non-Russian Victims, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 -- That Russian officials and Russians on a private basis have been defacing and destroying monuments to the victims of Stalin’s terror since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in 2022 has received a great deal of attention, but Horizontal Russia reports that 21 of the 25 destroyed in this period were devoted to non-Russian victims.

            Among the groups whose monuments were destroyed are the Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Germans, Latvians and Hungarians, with the Poles lone being identified (in most cases along with others) in 18 of the monuments desecrated or demolished in the last five years (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/29/oni-ubivayut-nas-potomkov).

            As the news agency which covers developments in the Russian Federation beyond Moscow’s ring road points out, this deprives these peoples of a way to maintain their memories and thus identities and is a conscious policy of the center rather than being some accident as some might think.