“That can only be answered by victory on the fronts.” Deputy Matveev on the dismantling of the monument to Pushkin in Riga

On May 30, a monument to poet Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in Kronvalda Park in Riga. It was transferred to storage in a warehouse, later the sculpture will be transferred to the Union of Artists of Latvia, writing Tuesday “Kommersant” with reference to the Riga City Duma. Deputy of the State Duma, Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Matveev commented on the situation with the demolition of the monument to the poet Russian media.

– It is very difficult to answer this, (to demolish) a monument to a great Latvian poet of Pushkin’s scale? I don’t know of any. One cannot but sympathize with the people of Riga themselves, that they live in a time when monuments to poets who died centuries ago are being demolished. The sense of Russophobia, which now exists in Western countries, is beginning to take on increasingly caricatural forms. It can be said, but the answer to it can only be a victory on the fronts and the strengthening of Russian culture, the propaganda of Russian culture.

I go to work along the Taras Shevchenko embankment, then I pass by the Kievsky station, then in the Okhotny Ryad district, I come across the Taras Bulba tavern, near which the barker in red pants walks, and I I have the impression of driving through the capital of a great country that does not suffer from an inferiority complex, which the Baltic countries suffer from and which, unfortunately, Ukraine fell ill with. I eat Kiev cutlets in the canteen of the Duma, the “Kyiv” cake is still in the shops, and no one cares about this topic.

I imagine what suffering the presence of names such as Moscow station or Moscow cutlets would cause in these countries.

In my opinion, this is the most correct policy: if we have something related to the name of Riga, it is not necessary to rename it. Everything should remain as traces of what a huge civilization is, perhaps an imperial civilization for someone, but which nevertheless continues to live. The main thing is not to get sick of this inferiority complex, not to start renaming something, removing it, much less tearing it down.

We are now considering the demolition of the monument to Pushkin in the context of the confrontation between Russia and the West.

But if you look at some Western internal affairs, there was the demolition of monuments to Southerners in America, which are associated with the Civil War, to certain figures who, in the understanding of modern American propaganda, exploited slave labor or something else 200 years ago, then you can only say that western society is sick in general.

Many things were demolished in our country at the same time, so I think there is no need to demolish anything more.

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