Will Kalinin be punished for Katyn massacre?

Democratic activist are going to send a request to Minsk City Executive Committee and to ask to remove the monument to Kalinin from Minsk. The initiative “to punish executioners” was announced in Katyn on August 23 – the European day of commemoration of victims of Stalinism and Nazism. A civil activist Vyachaskau Siuchyk has informed ERB about it. Siuchyk: “It is essential that the executioners who took decisions to eliminate Polish officers 70 years ago, in March 1940, should get their symbolic punishment. Inhabited localities named in their honour should be renamed together with squares and streets and their monuments should be removed”.

Mihail Kalinin was one of the six people who took the decision in 1940. In Siuchyk’s opinion, it is intolerable to have a monument, square, street and lane named in honour of this person in Minsk.

The next monument to draw the attention of Belarusian activists is the monument to Stalin in Svislach, Hrodna Province. And the recently created “Stalin’s Line”. According to Siuchyk, democratic activists will try to eliminate the names of the other executioners from city toponymy too.