Russia is facing tensions over the increasing number of memorials to soldiers fallen in Ukraine; local leaders oppose plaques to
"heroes" in schools, citing the psychological impact on children.
All over Russia
memorials to people who died as part of the occupation forces during the
during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: they are installed on the initiative of relatives, organizations
partly by the Russian military ministry. At the same time, the "mandatory" memorialization of
of the military in the form of "desks of heroes" or plaques at schools is increasingly
psychological pressure - local leaders are asking to stop hanging
plaques to the fallen, Radio Liberty writes and UNN reports .
Details
According to the
As the publication points out, the Russian Ministry of Defense is funding the so-called program "Perpetuation
the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland for 2019-2024, which cost the aggressor state
the aggressor state more than five billion rubles. At the same time, quite recently
recently, the occupiers' military department has increased the number of names of those killed from 199,272 to 228,005
the number of names of the deceased to be inscribed on the memorial structures of military
burial sites as part of a five-year program. To what extent is this increase due to the
the Russian war in Ukraine, it is difficult to assess: under this program, memorials are also being erected and
memorials to participants of the Second World War, the wars in Afghanistan,
Chechnya, and Syria.
The monuments
appear on private initiative. The publication writes that in the suburbs of Belgorod
a local resident "funded a memorial to his fellow soldiers who lost their lives in a
who lost their lives in a battle in which the patron managed to survive".
Also, the installation of
monuments are also supervised by public organizations that cooperate with the authorities.
According to anthropologist
Serhii Mokhov, an anthropologist and researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, says that many
monuments are appearing, mostly at burial sites.
It's hard to say what function [the new monuments to fallen soldiers] are fulfilling now, because they don't present any clear narrative. We still cannot understand their main idea, the hard message of the massively emerging practices that would involve not only the relatives of the dead
Necropolis in a school
A common way of
of memorializing the military in the form of "heroes' desks" or plaques at
schools from which the victims graduated, is already facing partial rejection,
as it puts psychological pressure.
According to Radio
Svoboda, the head of the Teachers' Alliance, there are already stories of
boards: it's like a political decision from above that will be implemented and impossible to resist.
That is, there are cases when supporters of the invasion
did not want to see memorial plaques in schools, and vice versa. "[Among teachers
the opinion is being formed] that there is no need to create a constant reminder of death.
There are already schools with 3-5 plaques, like on the wall of a columbarium," he says.
An interesting fact happened
in November in the city of Penza, where Mayor Oleksandr Basenko demanded at a meeting of the city council
to stop hanging plaques of the dead participants of the Russian aggression on educational
institutions.
I want you to think about how the children's psyche will perceive the large number of memorial plaques on school buildings. These are primarily educational institutions where children from the age of 7 study. I may be telling a military secret, but we have schools with 7-8 dead graduates. [...] We are asking for time to honor the memory and not to create necropolises on school buildings. Understand, there are children there, their psyche is not yet stable
Recall
The losses of the Russian
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, the losses of the Russian occupiers have already reached
about 355,750 people, 5,913 tanks and thousands of pieces of other military equipment,
according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.