In Primorsk, the monument to the fallen Finnish soldiers was demolished. The monument at the burial site existed for only three years and was liquidated by a court decision. The Finnish press saw the hand of the Kremlin in this event, and local residents have already laid eyes on the new object.
An article about the demolition of the monument near the former Lutheran church in Primorsk was published in the Finnish edition of Ilta-Sanomat (blocked in the Russian Federation). The author drew attention to the fact that the monument in honor of the “Finnish heroes” was destroyed immediately after the arrival of Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on the day of the 80th anniversary of the breaking of the blockade of Leningrad. At a meeting with veterans, he noted that Leningrad was kept in the ring by military men from many European countries, but Russia “due to tolerance” never pointed this out to its European partners.
According to the Finnish newspaper, after these words, a three-hour drive from St. Petersburg began the rapid demolition of the memorial in memory of the Finns who fought against the USSR during the Soviet-Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars. On January 23, the townspeople reported in local public pages that the memorial had been completely dismantled. “Do you think this is the right decision in the current geopolitical situation?” the author of the post was interested.
The monument at the church appeared in 2019. It consisted of seven granite slabs, on six of them the names and surnames of the dead were engraved, on one more there was an inscription in Finnish and Russian: “To the fallen heroes of Koivisto”.
Koivisto is the former name of Primorsk. The settlement was Finnish, after the Russian-Finnish war it briefly became Soviet, and from September 2, 1941 to June 18, 1944, it was occupied by Finnish troops. A large cemetery was formed near the church, with about 200 graves. In 1948, a house of culture was placed in the building of the church, and the tombstones were dismantled.
“When the Soviet-Finnish war and then the Great Patriotic War began, the inhabitants of Koivisto, who lived in this territory, the Finns, were drafted into the army. They served in different places. The Finns have a state decree, according to which all those who died at the front are returned and buried in the area in which they were called up. According to this law, everyone was brought to Koivisto and buried in this cemetery, ”Irina Kolotova, who led the Primorsky Museum of Local Lore for more than 20 years, told Fontanka.
Kolotova took part in the opening ceremony of the memorial in 2019. Then she said that the initiative to restore the burial belonged to the inhabitants of Finland, who fully paid for the work. “They received the appropriate permission to restore the burial and agreed on it in all necessary instances. Installation of slabs and landscaping was done entirely at the expense of the Finnish side,” — noted Irina Kolotova.
The monument was immediately disliked by some residents of Primorsk. In social networks, under the post about its opening, there were angry comments about the inscription, in which the dead are called “heroes”.
“The mistake made (we will call it that for now, although it seems to me that this is a deliberate provocation) must be corrected. It is not necessary to touch the gravestones, let them rest in our land. We know who is really there. War criminals. But according to Christian norms, we forgive them. But the memorial stele to Hitler’s accomplices and the platform for it must be removed, and this must be done urgently, because less than a month is left until January 27, the Day of lifting the blockade of Leningrad, ”wrote Vladimir, a resident of Primorsk.
After complaints, the inscription was changed to “Citizens of Koivisto who died in the war.” Those dissatisfied with the monument united in an initiative group and wrote a letter to the president, which was signed by 300 people. Appeals were also sent to other authorities. The dispute turned into a legal plane in March 2022, when the Vyborg City Court of the Leningrad Region received a lawsuit demanding that the memorial be recognized as an unauthorized construction and demolished. The Vyborg prosecutor also acted as a plaintiff. The department conducted an inspection and found that the memorial was landscaped on the territory of the church, which is a monument of regional significance.
The work was carried out by the St. Petersburg company “Korisstroy” commissioned by the Finnish society Koivisto. The agreement provided for the installation of the monument and its parts, the planting of shrubs.
“Defendant Korisstroy LLC does not have a corresponding license issued by the Russian Ministry of Culture. Consequently, he was not entitled to carry out work on the installation (installation) of the memorial and memorial signs (tablets). Lenoblproekt-V LLC, which developed the territory improvement project, also does not have a license giving the right to develop such projects. In addition, no historical and cultural expertise was carried out in relation to the project documentation, ”the court’s decision says.
As a result, the court recognized the monument as an unauthorized construction and ordered Korisstroy to demolish it. The decision was made in September 2022. “It took the initiative group three whole years to stop the illegal attempt to cast a shadow on the memory of our ancestors who liberated the world from the brown plague of Nazism,” representatives of the initiative group wrote on social networks.
The head of Korisstroy, Alexander Korotun, did not talk to Fontanka, citing being busy.
The former director of the Primorsky Museum of Local Lore, Irina Kolotova, specified that at the time of the opening of the memorial, the building of the church did not belong to the museum. The implementation of the idea was carried out by the local administration. Now this territory belongs to the Vyborg United Museum-Reserve.
“It was necessary then to think and not allow it,” Kolotova argues. Did these people fight against the Soviet Union? Yes, they fought. The Soviet-Finnish war was a war for territory on our part, and if the Soviet Union attacked the territory of Finland, it means that they defended their land. There is nothing of the sort in this. The monument was opened as a monument to reconciliation, like all other monuments on the Karelian Isthmus. There are more than 20 of them. And no one takes them down. See how the world has turned upside down.
The head of the administration of the Primorsky urban settlement, Sergei Sakharovsky, did not answer the correspondent’s questions, advising him to contact the press service of the Vyborgsky district of the Leningrad region.
At the church there was one more monument donated by the Finnish society Koivisto – a memorial sign “Cross and Sail”. The initiative group also considers it illegal. “It is obvious that 30 years ago, under the guise of a gift, a sign glorifying the allies of the Third Reich, who destroyed our ancestors, was installed in our city. Moreover, it also symbolizes the territorial hopes that are now quite understandable to us in relation to the Russian lands of the members of the Koivisto society, the initiative group says in social networks. Its members believe that the return of the monument to Finland is undesirable “due to the possibility of being used to incite Russophobic sentiments”, activists propose to transfer the “Cross and Sail” sign to the local history museum, but only with explanatory inscriptions.
Fontanka contacted one of the representatives of the initiative group, but he did not want to speak publicly. His colleague refused to talk on the phone.
Lena Vaganova, Fontanka.ru