This week, authorities in Sovetsk and Chernyakhovsk announced plans to relocate monuments to Lenin, ichthyologists noted possible problems during the development of the Curonian Spit, and construction of a new floating dock at the Yantar Baltic shipyard began. A plant for the production of electric motors was put into operation in Kaliningrad, and the first launch complex of an international sea terminal was opened in Pionersky.
Memory of Lenin
One of the topics of the week was the memory of the founder of the Soviet state, whose successor is the Russian Federation. The Sovetsk authorities confirmed the existence of plans to move the Lenin monument from the central square of the city to the park, noting that no final decision has been made. The city authorities are in no hurry to abandon this idea, despite the fact that the Lenin monument in Sovetsk is an object of cultural significance and cannot simply be moved from one place to another.
As a basis for the transfer, it is reported that Vladimir Ilyich greets city visitors walking from the station to the historic center with his back turned. There is simply a desire to hide the memory of Lenin outside a public place, because before no one complained about the monument facing away from someone. After all, any sculpture of a person has a face and a back. Moreover, the specified improvement project, taking into account the current location of the sculpture, became one of the winners of the VIII All-Russian Competition for the best projects for creating a comfortable urban environment.
The Soviet administration did not say who exactly initiated the move, stating that it was “an initiative group from the city.” But in the press service’s publication on the results of the discussion of the proposal received with “members of the public”Published on August 9 on the social network VKontakte, it was spoken in the first person without quotation marks.
“The new sculpture site will become the dominant feature of the modern urban space. We plan to leave the square as an open area for public events and celebrations.”– the press release says, from which we can conclude that we are talking specifically about the administration’s plans.
Since the administration did not publish any announcement about the discussion on moving the monument, there is no doubt that “members of the public” invited to the meeting selectively or through supporters of this initiative. It is therefore not surprising that the citizens who came to the discussion unanimously supported the relocation of the monument. But the statement that the sculpture moved to the park will become a dominant element is surprising. At best, it can become the dominant element of the square, but not “modern urban space”.
Interestingly, in social networks, in the comments in favor of moving the monument, the user “Mikhail Boev”, blocked on the basis of the demands of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia, and the user “Dmitry Karpovich” spoke out. It is known that the representative of the Kaliningrad nationalist movement Dmitry Karpovich supported the nomination of the organizer of the “Russian marches” Dmitry Demushkin as a candidate for the election of mayor of Kaliningrad in 2012; in 2013, Dmitry Karpovich became the initiator of renaming Kaliningrad to Konigsberg, and in 2014 he initiated the placement of a memorial plaque to Baron Wrangel in the Ulyanovo Nemansky district.
The memorial plaque for Wrangel, who collaborated with the interventionists, was put up without complications with the approval of local and regional authorities, but renaming the regional centre in the German style turned out to be a more difficult task. It ran into one obstacle – the need to collect signatures from 5% of the city’s population, and Karpovich and his accomplices, naturally, were unable to do this.
And on August 29, the authorities of another municipality, Chernyakhovsky district, announced their plans to move the monument to Lenin. Here, on the contrary, the initiators did not like the fact that Lenin was facing the guests driving along the federal highway. Nothing else can explain the fact that the authorities called the sculpture “restless” and proposed moving it from the square named after Lenin to a park on the street of the same name.
In Chernyakhovsk, the reason for moving the Lenin monument is no less hypocritical than in Sovetsk. According to the head of the administration, Sergei Bulychev, the authorities planned to improve the territory in such a way that it would be impossible to approach the monument. Bulychev remained silent about who exactly assigned the task of developing such plans. The head of the administration also did not name the public representatives who approved these plans in the arts council.
In early 2018, the authorities of Gusev moved the Lenin monument from Victory Square to the park on Ulyanov Street; in 2021, the Lenin monument in Polessk was moved from the square to the administration building; and now two more municipalities have decided to do something similar. Although the Constitution of the Russian Federation contains the provision that our state is the legal successor of the Soviet Union, for some reason some local authorities do not want to see monuments to the founder of the USSR where his contemporaries placed them.
What caused this surge in intentions to move Lenin monuments to less crowded places, especially considering that Russia is now at war with those who actively carried out de-Sovietization? This could be the action of the fifth column to divide society, or the desire of a certain part of the Russian elite to appease our enemies, who hate the Soviet Union for the victory over Nazism, in the hope of restoring relations.
There is nothing to discuss with the former; they need to be identified and punished. The latter need to be told that trying to present themselves in the eyes of their Western “partners” as nice people who are willing to push aside historical figures who are not liked by the West will not help them achieve what they want. Because the enemy has already clearly demonstrated that any agreement is just a respite for accumulating power.
The West does not need the Russian Federation as a sovereign state. It needs a country dismembered into separate pieces, including the Kaliningrad region independent of Russia. Any attempt to reach an agreement is regarded by it as the weakness of a defeated enemy that must be eliminated. And such disregard by the authorities for Soviet history will inevitably lead to a decrease in the people’s confidence, which in war conditions can have irreparable consequences.
Development of the Curonian Spit
Several news items this week were about the investment project of the company Spetsavtotrans for the development of the Curonian Spit. It is planned to build a protective pier on the Curonian Spit, deepen the fairway, create an artificial peninsula from excavated earth and build a hotel and a recreation complex up to 21 meters high on it. Ornithologists have long warned that the implementation of this project will lead to mass deaths of migratory birds, as the wall of buildings will cross the migratory route of birds from the White Sea to the Baltic.
On August 26, the interregional public organization “Council of Experts on Nature Reserves” stated that it had once again appealed to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to prevent damage to the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and to migratory birds. Environmentalists claim that the implementation of this investment project is only possible in violation of Russian law.
On the same day it became known that the development of the Curonian Spit threatens not only birds, but also fish. Fish farmers said that the Baltic whitefish population, whose main spawning ground is located on a shoal near the village of Rybachy on the Curonian Spit, may be threatened. Work to deepen the bay may cause damage to bottom biocenoses, including disruption of the whitefish’s food supply.
The acting governor of the Kaliningrad region, Alexey Besprozvannykh, reacted to this news. He said that the regional authorities will not allow the implementation of plans that could harm the Curonian Spit. However, it is alarming that they are going to discuss the emerging problems with the director of the Curonian Spit National Park, Anatoly Kalina. It is Kalina who does not see any problems with the investment project. At a working meeting, he stated that the scientists’ conclusions about the danger of glass structures on the migratory route of birds are based on “outdated” data and accused ornithologists of hindering the implementation of the investment project.
Production and infrastructure news.
On August 28, a plant for the production of electric motors of the Avtotor holding company was opened in the Kaliningrad region. The enterprise was built within the framework of a special investment contract between the Kaliningrad car manufacturer and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia and the government of the Kaliningrad region. The production capacity of the plant is planned to produce 60 thousand electric motors per year with power from 23 kW to 140 kW for various types of electric vehicles. When the production line is fully loaded, more than 140 highly qualified jobs will be created.
On August 31, the first launching complex of the international sea terminal in Pionersky was put into operation. Permission was received to put into operation pier No. 1 with a length of 164 m, at the pier it is allowed to moor vessels up to 191 m in length to the crew of the double universal ship. The RO-PAX deck ferry “Antey”, operating on the Morskoy line, was the first to assess the port capacity of the port of Ust-Luga – Kaliningrad sea port” as of May 2024. The ship can transport rolling stock and accompanying passengers; two decks can accommodate 94 road trains. https://rossaprimavera.ru/news/7452d99f
On August 31, the ceremony of laying the new floating dock “Captain Anatoly Ermolaev” with a launching capacity of 12 thousand tons took place at the Yantar Baltic Shipyard. The construction of the dock is scheduled to be completed in 2026.
While some enterprises in the Kaliningrad region are being put into operation or modernized, the dairy production plant in Slavsk is on the verge of closing in the near future. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the region filed a claim with the Arbitration Court of the Kaliningrad Region demanding the suspension of the activities of the “Ekomolprodukt” plant due to pollution of water bodies and soil. Previously, the company was repeatedly fined for exceeding the maximum permissible concentrations of pollutants in waste water. And in April-May 2024, excess pollution was detected again.
Source: Rossa Primavera
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.