A Czech man temporarily chained himself to a monument dedicated to Ivan Konev, the marshal who commanded the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front during the liberation of much of Poland and Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation and entered the Czechoslovak capital on May 9, 1945, in protest to plans to remove it from its current location.
According to Sputnik Czechia, the man chained himself to the base of the monument on Monday afternoon. Police arrived at the scene, but left shortly after because they could not find any violation of public order.
The activist accused local city council authorities of “unnecessarily stirring up emotions,” and said “the Czech Republic has enough problems.” He remained chained to the monument until the Monday evening. He later ended his protest, saying he had to get up early to go to work in the morning.
Михаил Шульц, житель городка в 120 км от Праги, приковал себя сегодня к памятнику маршалу Коневу в Праге в знак протеста против его сноса. pic.twitter.com/GSnYNCKtoj
— Голос Мордора (@spacelordrock) 16 сентября 2019 г.
Tweet reads: “Michael Schulz, resident of a town about 120 km from Prague, chained himself to the monument to Marshal Konev in Prague in protest of its removal.”
“The controversy surrounding the monument to Konev…affects me personally,” the activist said. “My grandfather fought in World War II, that’s why this matter is definitely of my concern,” he added.
Over the past several days, local activists have been holding protests at the monument’s base and in front of the local municipality, and placing flowers at the monument to protest its planned relocation.
Last Thursday, councillors in the municipal district of Prague 6 voted to remove the Konev monument and replace it with a memorial to the liberation of Prague in May 1945. Authorities have yet to determine where to place the old monument, floating suggestions that it be placed at a local military cemetery, or the as yet unfinished Museum to 20th Century Memory.
Prague 6 Mayor Ondrej Kolar justified the monument’s relocation, saying that the Red Army brought terror along with it when it entered Czechoslovakia in 1945. Kolar’s comments prompted Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky to accuse the official of acting like a “Gauleiter” (i.e. a party leader of a regional branch of the Nazi Party), leading the Czech foreign ministry to summon Russian Ambassador to Czechia Alexander Zmejevsky in protest.
Czech President Milos Zeman spoke out in defence of the monument, saying it should be left where it is, and called the situation around the monument “shameful.”
Czechoslovakia was one of the first countries to fall to Nazi aggression in the lead up to World War II. Germany annexed part of the country in September 1938, and swallowed up the rest of the country in March 1939 together with Hungary and Poland, disbanding its military without a fight and establishing a Slovak puppet state. However, in May 1944, a formation known as the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, consisting of over 16,000 troops, was formed on Soviet territory. These Czech and Slovak troops would go on to fight alongside the Red Army in the liberation of Czechoslovakia, including the Prague Strategic Offensive Operation. It’s estimated that nearly 12,000 Soviet, Czechoslovak, Romanian and Polish troops died in the operation to free Prague in the closing days of World War II.
