Signs set up near the Soviet monuments in Lithuania stating their inconsistency with the truth
The Biržai District Municipality in the north of Lithuania placed signs near the monuments to Red Army soldiers indicating that the inscriptions on them "are inconsistent with historical facts,” as reported by Lietuvos žinios.
The signs that appeared near the memorials state: "The burial of soldiers of the USSR are from the times of the Second World War (an object of cultural heritage). The ideological inscriptions of the Soviet period are inconsistent with historical facts."
These signs are in response to the explanatory inscriptions made during the Soviet period in Lithuanian history on the monuments to Red Army soldiers who died during the Baltic operation in 1944 while liberating Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from German occupation.
According to an advisor from the Department for Cultural Heritage of the Biržai District Municipality, Dalius Mikelionis, the initiative to install the signs tablets was adopted without official authorization.
"We feel that we are contributing to the dissemination of historical fact, and we believe that we have done well. However, we will not be surprised if our efforts are considered to be arbitrary, and for this, perhaps, we will be reprimanded," Mikelionis stated.
He also noted that at first the Mayor's office proposed the installation of the signs to officials at the Department of Cultural Heritage, who redirected the local authorities to the Ministry of Culture, who asked the Foreign Ministry, where they were told that it is not possible to do so without an interstate agreement. Mikelionis reminded that the negotiations between Russia and Lithuania concerning the burial places of Red Army soldiers and the Soviet monuments in the country have been going on for 15 years already.