Authorities in the Russian city of Tomsk have dismantled a monument to victims of political repression, dedicated to Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Kalmyks. “To say that it is sad and painful is to say nothing,” said Fr. Wojciech Ziółek, SJ, a missionary in Tomsk.
The Square of Remembrance, located in the city center, was fenced off and then surrounded by officers in order to remove the stones forming the monument. According to eyewitness accounts cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe, police reportedly banned photography of the works and checked the documents of those attempting to violate the ban.
Ksenia Fadeeva, a former associate of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in 2024 in a penal colony, wrote on Telegram that an NKVD prison once stood at the site of the square. During archaeological work, traces of mass burials were discovered there.
The Square of Remembrance in Tomsk was opened in 1992 on the initiative of the city administration and the Memorial Association.
“To say that it is sad and painful is to say nothing. Such things are – unfortunately – one of the components (an inseparable one!) of the Siberian mission… But as long as Jesus wants the Jesuits to be in Tomsk, we remain,” wrote Fr. Wojciech Ziółek, SJ, a missionary in Tomsk, on social media.
As noted by Alexandra Polivanova from Memorial, Polish sites of remembrance in Russia are among those that have suffered the most since 2022, the start of the Kremlin’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
“In many cities, monuments have effectively been removed, dismantled. (…) A monument to Polish deportees was removed in Buryatia; Polish and Lithuanian monuments were removed in Pivovarikha, in the Irkutsk region. (Other locations include) Petrozavodsk, Vorkuta, St. Petersburg, Shlisselburg, Galashor, Yakutsk, Tomsk, and Bialystok in the Tomsk region,” the activist reported in February this year in an interview with PAP.
In November 2025, bas-reliefs of the Virtuti Militari Order and the September Campaign Cross were also removed from the Polish War Cemetery in Katyn. A few months earlier, the same was done in Mednoye.