A Polish agency is campaigning to take monuments to the Soviet armed forces off the streets, dubbing them a bitter reminder of Moscow’s domination, and consign them to less conspicuous “educational parks”.

The state-backed Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which investigates crimes from the second world war to the end of communist rule, wants local authorities to take down so-called “monuments of gratitude to the Red Army”.



“The monuments ... would most likely be placed in ... monument parks,” said Grzegorz Waligóra, from the IPN’s research department.

“An educational park will be built where visitors can see the monuments as well as learn why they were built and by whom.”

The agency is cataloguing 300 such monuments, of which those in a decent state would be preserved. The plans would not affect Soviet cemeteries in Poland.

Waligóra said two potential sites for a monument park had been proposed, including a former Soviet army base in Borne Sulinowo in north-western Poland.

The plan leaves local councils free to make their own decisions. It has been criticised by Moscow, which urged historians to “talk to the Polish veterans ... who fought side by side with Russian soldiers” before deciding anything.

Moscow in July 2015 said it was outraged by a move by Polish authorities in Nowa Sól to reduce to rubble a memorial depicting Polish and Red Army soldiers as brothers in arms.

In September Moscow summoned Poland’s ambassador to protest against the removal of a Soviet-era statue in the town of Pieniężno.

The neighbours share a complex history. Soviet troops invaded eastern Poland weeks after Adolf Hitler’s forces attacked from the west in September 1939. The Red Army later freed Poland from Nazi occupation but also persecuted soldiers from the Polish underground army.

After the second world war Poland spent four decades under Soviet domination before embracing democracy and joining the European Union. More recently it has been among the strongest critics of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.