Monuments to victims of repression and the Holodomor were dismantled in Luhansk

In occupied Luhansk, on July 17, monuments to the victims of Stalinist repressions and the victims of the Holodomor were dismantled.

The decision to dismantle it was made by the Russian-controlled city council, allegedly “following appeals from veterans’ organizations,” which demanded “to demolish fake monuments that have no historical and cultural significance and offend the patriotic feelings of Luhansk residents.” Previously, the dismantling of such monuments took place in other Ukrainian cities occupied by Russia.

The statement of the occupation administration claims that both monuments were erected “during the Ukrainian period” (obviously, independent Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR is meant). However, as it follows from the database of the Sakharov Center, the monument to the victims of repression was erected in September 1990, that is, back in the Ukrainian SSR, and on the initiative not of “nationalists”, as pro-Russian channels claim, but of the public of the city and the regional “Memorial”. The monument in the form of a stele made of black granite with an engraved cross was at the place of mass executions – the Husynovsky cemetery, where in 1977 the burial of victims of repression was discovered.

The monument to the victims of the mass famine of 1932-1933 (Holodomor) was erected in 2008. It was reported that flowers were brought to him even after the declaration of power by the “LPR” group and the Russian occupation of the city.

The Russian authorities often criticize other countries, especially Ukraine and the Baltic countries, for dismantling Soviet-era monuments, equating it to the “rehabilitation of Nazism” and calling it a rewriting of history.