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Georgia smashes history for new parliament site
Published: 17 December, 2009, 15:19
Edited: 30 January, 2010, 19:45
TAGS: Conflict, Georgia, Saakashvili, History
A memorial to Georgians who died in World War Two is going to be taken down in the Georgian city of Kutaisi to make way for a building that will house parliament when it is relocated from the capital Tbilisi.
The date when the monument is to be completely dismantled – December 21 – coincides with President Saakashvili's birthday.
The plan to pull down the monument has caused outrage.
“This is absolutely unacceptable. It has become a tradition for the authorities to relocate or destroy monuments, without asking anyone. It's yet another example of the Georgian government's total disregard for public opinion and a show of utter disrespect for the creator of the monument,” says Georgi Akhvlediadze from Christian Democratic Party.
Many see it as a sign of disrespect not just to the sculptor, but to the Georgian nation as a whole.
“It's a cynical and absolutely arrogant decision. We condemn it. Maybe not everyone knows, but every 10th Georgian fell in World War Two, so it's very important for us,” opposition leader Zurab Nogaideli says.
The monument was created in the 1980s by sculptor Merab Bedzenishvili. He refuses to speak to the media about the destruction of his work. But he did send out a statement to Georgian newspapers.
“The Georgian government has committed an unparalleled crime by destroying the memorial. With this act, they show they are still living in the Stone Age. By destroying the monument, they are inspiring their own children to violence and cruelty. I am a proud son of Georgia. Those who destroy monuments do not realize they are insulting not just me, but Georgia,” the statement reads.
And what does the Georgian government have to say about all this?
“The President has his own point of view on this issue. As he promised, Kutaisi will become a city that will live up to all international and European standards,” Presidential spokesperson, Manana Manzhgaladze said.
But many are questioning what European standards encourage governments to destroy monuments to their fathers and grandfathers who fell in the war.
Earlier this year, President Saakashvili promised to turn Georgia’s second-largest city into a booming European metropolis. Moving the country’s parliamentary seat to Kutaisi is supposed to help in reaching that goal.
City authorities claim the monument has to be moved to allow the construction of the new parliament building. They say the memorial was vandalized in the 1990s, and is impossible to restore.
The authorities promise they will build another monument, just like the old one, somewhere else in Kutaisi.
How many more monuments and buildings, sacred to the Georgian people, will be destroyed in President Saakashvili's quest to create a brighter future is a question many in Georgia are asking more and more often.
Read also – Soviet War Memorial To Be Exploded in Georgia on Stalin's Birthday
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A comment about the Alexander Nevsky cathedral. This is a magnificent edifice built late in the 19th Century, during the height of the Tsarist period of intense russification of Estonia. It was named after the Russian Orthodox “sainted” military commander who won a decisive victory against a combined Teutonic Knights and Estonian force on the icy Lake Peipus in 1242. And it was sited at the highest point of the Old City of Tallinn at its administrative center as an exercise in power politics to remind Estonians who their imperial rulers were. Its location is across a square from the present-day Estonian parliament still psychologically fulfills the purpose of reminding parliamentarians as they step out of the parliament building of who the power to be reckoned with in Estonia is, or should be. Its architecture, though magnificent, is utterly out of keeping with the rest of Tallinn. The rest of the Old City’s architecture is of Teutonic and Scandinavian style. And suddenly, in the middle of it, is a large, prominent building in the Russian onion-dome style which could not be more visually out of place if it tried to be – and it did try to be. Although I have not quizzed Estonians about it, my hunch is that most would value it for its physical magnificence, but its symbolic significance as a Russian political statement is also very clear to them. Many think that Tallinn’s skyline would look better without it, but they also admire the quality and beauty of the building itself, and I also agree with that. They respect the rights of people to worship there as they wish (including an Estonian congregation, I think), and I fully support Estonians’ commitment to religious freedom. Yet they also disdain Russian politics which used something that ought to be sacred as an instrument of cynical politics, and I share that view, too. As you can see, Kihnu, life is often not straightforward in Estonia. A neighbor like Russia has made it so.
Kihnu, two years ago I stayed at a guesthouse in Tartu, Estonia. I knew the landlady from previously staying there, but this time she looked particularly stressed. She explained that a group of three Russian railway workers from the Estonian border town of Narva had just left that morning, after staying for about a week. When they arrived, the first thing they demanded – demanded, mind you – was that the landlady pull down the Estonian flag from in front of the premises, because they said “this offended them.” When the landlady politely refused, the Russian guests, who woke up each morning very early to go to work, retaliated by tuning every radio and television that they could access in the premises to Russian language stations, and turned them up to full volume, thereby waking everyone in the house to the sound of Russian. They also delighted in blasting transmissions of the Russian national anthem at full volume through the premises, and went out of their way to behave as obnoxiously as they could in other public areas of the guesthouse. By the time they left, the landlady, who was normally a healthy and athletic person, was reduced to a bundle of nerves, and when I arrived she had just returned from the doctor’s with some blood pressure medication. This is not an isolated incident, Kihnu, and typifies the kind of behavior Estonians suffer at the hands of a certain segment of their Russian population. You will understand why this does not endear those kind of Russians to them, nor the Russian nation whose propaganda and agitation inspires such attitudes. Other Russians who behave in civilized ways have no problems with Estonians, and there is no underlying general anti-Russianism in the country that I am aware of. However, I can understand that Estonians may be cautious when first meeting strangers to ascertain which kind of Russians they are, and I can certainly understand why they deeply resent Moscow’s ongoing hostile propaganda against them..
I am from Croatia, and I just want to say to Bianca:
You have a lot of missinformation about Croatia....
A lot...