Photo: Govorit NeMoskva
A monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police organisation, has been erected in the city of Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East, independent news outlet Govorit NeMoskva reported on Friday.
The opening ceremony, held on 20 December, so-called Chekist Day, when Russia traditionally honours members of its security bodies, was attended by security officers, officials, veterans and local military cadets, Govorit NeMoskva said.
The monument has appropriately been positioned on the intersection of Ussuriysky Boulevard and Dzerzhinsky Street, near the headquarters of the local Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Local activists from the Libertarian Party opposed the installation of the monument, stressing that “the monstrous renaissance of state terror” in modern Russia “had its roots in the activities of Dzerzhinsky and his associates”. The activists launched a petition against the monument, which gathered fewer than 100 signatures.
Earlier this month, the chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Valery Fadeyev, called for the Solovetsky Stone, Russia’s most important monument to the victims of Soviet-era political repression, to be moved from outside the Lubyanka Building in Moscow, which used to house the KGB.
Fadeyev called the stone “a slap in the face to the people currently working in the Lubyanka”, which is still used today by the FSB.
The statue of Dzerzhinsky which once stood on Lubyanka Square — formerly Dzerzhinsky Square — was removed in the early 1990s. A copy of the statue was re-erected in front of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service offices near Moscow in 2023, with Russia’s foreign intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin lauding Dzerzhinsky as an “example of honesty, selflessness and duty” at the unveiling ceremony.
