Broader support is needed for the monument to the occupation to be torn down
The will of the Latvian people to demolish the "Monument to the Soviet Soldiers - Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders" is insufficient. Previous public initiatives to do something with this artefact of Soviet power have received weak support. A referendum would require a much broader public mobilization.
The proposals so far on the Mana Balss platform have had no more impact than individual expressions of will - to paint the monument in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and to break off a piece with a hammer. On the contrary, these private actions have led to increased mobilization of supporters of Russian aggression. The pro-Kremlin party Latvian Russian Union (Latvijas Krievu savienība) has organized a movement to guard Soviet monuments called "Nochnoy dozor" in the wake of the incident, and "If anything happens to the monument, LKS members threaten war." Even if they try to move the monument "even by a millimeter". But it is demolition or relocation that is one of the solutions offered by the government coalition to rid the capital of this symbol of false liberators.
Four legal solutions
It should be recalled that the Ministry of Justice has developed a total of four options to legitimize the removal of the monument.
* The first option is to check whether the Russian side has fulfilled its contractual obligations regarding the 110 Latvian memorials in Russia. If not, then the commitments made at the time to take care of the "Monument to the Soviet Soldiers - Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders" could be treated as non-binding on Latvia.
* The second option is to terminate the agreement because Russia, as one of the contracting parties, started a war.
* The third option is to review the compatibility of the monument with the legal scope of the protection granted by the Latvian state. It should be recalled that the requirement for the maintenance of memorial structures and mass graves was included in 1994 in a document entitled "AGREEMENT between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Latvia on the social protection of Russian Federation military pensioners and their family members living in the territory of the Republic of Latvia". The controversial Article 13 was included here so that Latvia would not put obstacles in the way of burying Russian military pensioners and beautifying their graves in the Soviet spirit. But Russia now interprets it as protection for every artefact of Soviet power, above all the monument in Victory Park.
* The fourth option for dealing with the monument is to move it somewhere else in Latvia. At one time the idea of moving it to Ķīšezers was discussed. It is now clear that this would be much too close to reduce the gathering of occupation celebrants and Kremlin worshippers. But if the monument were moved to a more remote location from Riga, the question remains - what sins had Nida, Kolka, Ainaži, Ape or Zilupe committed to have to host this menace?
An initiative with Ulmanis-like ambition
Latvian society has so far not made its attitude towards the most influential artefact of Soviet power sufficiently clear. The public initiative platform Mana Balss has four initiatives concerning the "Monument to the Soviet Soldiers - Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders". The oldest of them, "RESTORATION OF RIGA'S REAL VICTORY SQUARE", received 12,518 votes. This initiative is the grandest in terms of scale, as it calls for the implementation of the 1930s idea in Victory Park of building a festival square for more than 200,000 visitors, an amphitheater-shaped sports stadium that could accommodate 25,000 spectators, a meeting palace with 10,000 seats, a victory tower sixty meters high with a shrine to the nation's heroes, and a victory avenue. Accordingly, such a development would require the dismantling of the existing Soviet memorial. In 2012, this initiative was submitted to the Saeima and rejected due to the already mentioned Russian military pensioners' protection treaty.
At least there will be posters
In 2016, two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, signatures were collected for the next, but much more modest in scope, initiative "FOR THE REDEVELOPMENT OF VICTORY PARK BY ADDING EDUCATIONAL POSTERS BASED ON HISTORICAL FACTS". The posters would reflect information about the consequences of the occupations of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the Soviet and Waffen SS Latvian divisions, the consequences of the war in Latvia and the Holocaust in Latvia. The posters should be produced in Latvian, Russian, English and German. The initiative did not achieve much - only 1,634 signatures - and consequently did not progress further.
The 2017 initiative with a clear name and objective, "DISMANTLING THE VICTORY MONUMENT", gathered the highest support - 19,615 votes. The initiative has been submitted to the Saeima and is still sitting there. It was last discussed at a meeting of the Saeima Foreign Affairs Committee on March 30, after Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine. The Committee found that "the dismantling of the Victory Monument in Riga is not possible from the point of view of international law, but leaving it in its current form is also unacceptable. A feasible solution in the short term would be the installation of permanent information boards at the monument on the occupation of Latvia and the historical context of the monument".
This would satisfy the wishes of those who wanted to have posters rather than the dismantling initiative. Similarly, large photographs of war scenes from Ukraine would be placed at the foot of the monument, as the proponents of the newest initiative of March 4 want: "CREATING A PHOTO EXHIBITION IN THE VICTORY PARK ON THE DEVASTATION CAUSED BY THE RUSSIAN WAR IN UKRAINE". By yesterday, 5,892 signatures had been collected, and the Mayor of Riga has already promised that there will be an exhibition in place by May 9.
Our flags on rusty flagpoles
Overall, the success so far in affecting the Russian Federation monument in any way is negligible: adding together the support for related initiatives, 32,133 voters have supported the removal of the symbol of occupation (and there may be some overlap). On the other hand, 7,526 voters want to combat the consequences of the occupation and Russian aggression using posters. If this continues, there will be no great referendum on the removal of the monument.
The only successes so far in the fight against the powerful legacy of the Soviet occupation are the Latvian and Ukrainian flags hoisted on rusty flagpoles and the partial fencing of the monument to at least symbolically disrupt the May 9 flower festival with its subsequent illegal rally in the form of a night guard, called for by the pro-Kremlin party Latvian Russian Union, and the unapproved power parade of the "Russian world".
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