About 70 patriotic civil society organizations of Moldova are protesting against the possible demolition of the Liberation Monument, standing in the capital city’s main street before the Moldovan Academy of Sciences for several decades now.    

Igor Tulyantsev, leader of the “Motherland for Eurasian Union” organization, stated at a news conference at Infotag today that the organizations are expressing indignation over the sayings by certain Chisinau scientists that the square in front of the Academy will come to have a monument to the Romanian language. As for the Liberation Monument, it should be evacuated to another place, as per the mildest of proposals.  

“We are the children and grandchildren of those liberator soldiers, in whose honor the magnificent monument was built. We feel deeply insulted with and are expressing our categorical protest against such intentions”, said the patriotic organizations’ joint statement.    

Its authors reminded that the monument in Chisinau was erected to immortalize Moldova’s liberation from Nazi invaders in August 1944, and thousands of Chisinau citizens and visitors come to the monument every Victory Day of May 9 and every Moldova liberalization day of August 24 to venerate the memory of fallen warriors. 

Tulyantsev said that in Berlin and a dozen other European capitals, there are also monuments to Second World War heroes standing all right, and it occurs to nobody there to demand dismantling or removal of the monuments.  

Igor Tulyantsev stated that if by March 27 the Moldovan authorities fail to give an articulate answer on the monument’s destiny, the patriots shall start forming citizens’ squads to protect the monument.  

Sergiu Nazaria, Chairman of the Pro Moldova Association of Historians and Political Scientists, reminded who the authors are of the Academy’s initiative concerning the Liberalization Monument replacement.   

“These are academician Nicolae Dabija – in his Soviet past the winner of the Premium of the Leninist Komsomol [communist youth league]; President of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences academician Gheorghe Duca – former secretary of the Komsomol organization of the Academy. These two gentlemen would not deserve public attention, had it not been for their destabilizing the Moldovan society. Tens of thousands of Moldovans sacrificed their lives defending, as Soviet Army warriors, their native land and then liberating Europe from fascism. And now some people seek to sink the heroes’ memory into oblivion”, said the historian.        

Sergiu Nazaria said that recently he had taken part in a scientific forum on the liberation of Europe from fascism, which was held simultaneously in Bratislava and Vienna. 

“Addresses at the forum were made by many people – from journalists and historians to incumbent ministers and former prime ministers of Austria and Slovakia. All of them, without exception, thanked the Soviet Army and its soldiers for liberation from the ‘brown plague of Nazism’”, said Sergiu Nazaria.      

Chisinau journalist Mihai Lupasco confessed that when he hears about attempts to liquidate military monuments or cemeteries, his soul starts boiling with anger. 

“My grandfather Ivan Drajdei was a company commander and was killed in the summer of 1944 during the assault of the Serpeni bridgehead on the Dniester River [near the Serpeni Village in the Anenii Noi Raion]’ His remnants were buried in one big “brothers grave” – soldiers’ mass grave. As a descendant of a warrior, I can’t let anybody desecrate the memory of soldiers who fulfilled their sacred duty before us the living generation. Any attempt to erase memory of the past only causes a new war”, said Lupasco.