Dismantling Soviet Relics: How Polish Cities Are Erasing Red Army Monuments

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Few symbols provoked more persistent friction than the Monument of Gratitude to the Red Army, variations of which stood in central squares from Olsztyn and Szczecin to small western border towns. In city after city, cranes hoisted multiton concrete figures of Soviet soldiers clutching submachine guns away from civic plazas. Local residents often gathered in silence or offered scattered applause as the heavy plinths fractured beneath demolition hammers.

In Malbork, workers took down a Red Army memorial that had stood since 1945, dismantling an obelisk crowned with a red star before carting the broken stone to municipal depots. In Glubczyce and Byczyna, regional IPN officials live-streamed demolitions, publicly reframing the events as overdue closures to decades of historical distortion. These were not spontaneous acts of street vandalism. They were calculated, engineered removals executed by licensed contractors under municipal oversight, stripping away the visual infrastructure of Soviet power block by block.