The ruling coalition of Riga City Council has agreed to relocate the sculpture to Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin to somewhere else, as confirmed by city council vice-chairman Linda Ozola’s office manager Kaspars Adijāns.
It was decided to survey locations where the sculpture could be moved. The ruling coalition decided to do this with all haste.
So far there are no deadlines of terms for the sculpture’s relocation.
The Kods Rīgai bloc, which includes four city council deputies, invited the local government to dismantle the sculpture by the 4th of May. One of the reasons for the decision to relocate the sculpture was its allegedly illegal installation and its alleged use by Russia as a tool of soft power and propaganda.
The sculpture was unveiled in Kronvalds Park on the 22nd of August 2009 with support from the Russian Embassy and then the Mayor of Riga Nils Ušakovs, but without support from the National Inspectorate of Cultural Monuments and Riga Historic Centre Preservation and Protection Council.
At the beginning of March Riga City Council’s Monuments Council supported the proposal to dismantle or relocate six monuments in the city. They explained it with the monuments in question somehow glorifying the Soviet era. The council supported the proposal to dismantle the monument dedicated to writer Andrejs Upītis and the sculpture dedicated to “Stalinism Era writer” Anna Sakse. The council also agreed to dismantle the sculpture to Aleksandr Pushkin in Kronvalda Park, because it was installed there illegally.
The Monument Council also supported the proposal to dismantle the monument erected in 1978 to scientist, “Three-time hero of socialist work in the USSR” Mstislav Keldysh located opposite to the University of Latvia and remove the memorial plaque to historian Jānis Zutis located on Basteja Boulevard 12.
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