Prague, Oct 31 (CTK) – Czech politicians have been in a dispute with the Russian embassy over the text about controversial Soviet military commander Ivan Konev that they want to place on the statue of the late Red Army commander in Prague, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) wrote on Tuesday.
In a letter recently sent to the Russian ambassador, Prague 6th District Mayor Ondrej Kolar (TOP 09) announced the plan to write information about both the positive and negative aspects of Konev’s personality in Czech, Russian and English on the pedestal of the statue in Prague-Dejvice, the paper writes.
The Russian embassy in Prague said Kolar’s proposals are unacceptable and it warned that the plan may harm mutual relations of the two countries.
The embassy also said the Czechs may be interested in taking care of the memorials to Czechoslovak legionaries in Russia next year when the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the independent state will be celebrated, HN writes.
In 1945, Konev’s armies liberated a great part of the Czech territory that had been controlled by the Nazi Germany. However, Konev seemed rather indifferent to the heavy losses of the troops he commanded. As the Warsaw Pact commander-in-chief, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising that revolted against the communist regime in 1956. He died in 1973.
The new texts are based on Russian language sources and prominent Czech experts in military history worked on them.
“My aim is neither to provoke nor to distort anything. I just want to present the facts to people. I admit that they may be unpleasant, but once they can be proved I consider them indisputable,” Kolar writes in the letter to the embassy that HN received from him.
Kolar also offered to the embassy that Konev’s statue may be moved to its premises if Russia is against the new text. He nevertheless writes that he resolutely refused to remove the statue in the past because Marshal Konev is a part of Czech history.
Czech diplomats are to settle the dispute, but the Foreign Ministry has not provided any information on the issue, the paper writes.
Communist (KSCM) politician Marta Semelova warned against the possible removal of the statue in the party’s newspaper Halo noviny. She claims that Kolar grossly offended the fallen Red Army soldiers, was rewriting history in a scandalous way, setting people against each other and tarnishing the Red Army, HN writes.
The paper says Semelova provided a good example of how the Russians try to influence the developments in the Czech Republic.
Kolar said it is alarming that Semelova had access to the letter he wrote to the Russian ambassador. “The KSCM has proved in this way that it is the fifth column of the Kremlin,” he said.
Semelova confirmed that she read Kolar’s letter, but he refused to say who showed it to her.
The Czech counter-intelligence BIS writes in its recently released annual report that the Russian secret services are getting more and more active in the country, use agents with diplomatic cover and try to influence public opinion through a quality network of contacts.
HN recalls that painting pink a Prague monument to Soviet tank crews in 1991 caused a lot of controversy and angrered Russian diplomats.
