In the village of Yogla, a memorial to Poles from the Home Army who died in the "Yogla" camp in the late 1940s was destroyed. At the same time, vandals desecrated the graves of Polish soldiers in two neighboring villages — Ustye and Bobrovik. The local branch of the "Yabloko" party reported that the memorial was destroyed "brutally," with crosses torn out, slabs and lamps smashed.
"The crime was planned and organized," said Ksenia Sergeeva, a member of the Novgorod branch of the "Yabloko" party, about the damage to the three memorials, to "We Can Explain"*. "On October 30, my colleagues and I went there to read the names of the repressed and laid flowers at all the memorial signs in this cemetery. I connect these events." Sergeeva found out that shortly before the desecration of the monuments, local residents saw "equipment and vehicles without numbers" at the memorial in Bobrovik.
The memorial at the cemetery began to be created in 1992. The Home Army Veterans Committee and the Bobrovik administration participated in this. In camp No. 270, "more than 600 Poles died of hunger, disease, or exhaustion and were buried in nameless graves," wrote the Polish consulate general in St. Petersburg.
Local residents told "Siberia. Realities"** that this monument had never been attacked before; on the contrary, both local authorities and the public thanked for its installation.
This is far from the first case of the destruction of places of memory for repressed Poles. As calculated by the channel "We Can Explain," since the beginning of the war, at least 17 such memorials have been destroyed throughout Russia.
The first memorial to repressed Poles was damaged on November 11, 2022, on Poland's Independence Day. After that, a wave of vandalism swept across the country. Monuments in St. Petersburg, Vorkuta, Vladimir, Yakutsk, as well as in other cities and villages, were attacked.
Activists claim that all this is not the hooligan actions of vandals, but state policy against a "hostile" country, into which Poland was categorized after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In the summer of 2022, the Polish flag disappeared from the Katyn memorial by decision of the Ministry of Culture "due to the hostile position" of the country, and the State Duma called for the elimination of the memorial itself.
In November 2023, at the behest of State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a working group was created to discuss the possible revision of assessments of the Katyn tragedy.
* Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent".
** Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent" and "undesirable" organization.
Photo: Ksenia Sergeeva