General Pavel Rybalko was red in the face. The source of his blush was a can of paint.
Last January, vandals entered the Folknare memorial cemetery in the north Bohemian town of Decin and drenched a sandstone bust of the famed Soviet tank marshal, whose armored division is credited with liberating Prague from the Nazis on May 8, 1945.
Mayor Vladimir Medek called local police. Three days later, however, it was Moscow's representative who was calling him. Prague-based Russian consul Mikhail Veller wanted Rybalko's likeness rehabilitated.
"We can't afford to have a problem with Russia," Medek confessed. "We had to clean it."
Medek said he hired a company for 16,000 Kc ($420), more than the 12,000 Kc he originally paid for the bust.
Despite two weeks of polishing, traces of paint still remain.
Medek's loyalties and Rybalko's legacy are part of an unresolved relationship Czechs still have with communism -- which has been both savior, in 1945, and villain, in 1968.
The statue of Rybalko was commissioned to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the end of World War II. For years, it was displayed in the courtyard of Decin-based industrial gas manufacturer Ferox, which had been named after Rybalko under communism.
Removed after the 1989 revolution, the statue was found in a Ferox storeroom last year. Ferox offered to sell it to Decin for a "symbolic fee," Medek said.
The alternative was to spend 100,000 Kc to demolish it. While the mayor minimizes the importance of the statue, Decin was nonetheless under no obligation to purchase it.
According to Medek, he went through with the deal because the Soviet liberation is an important part of Czechoslovak history.
"We can't deny it," he said. "It's not that we want to glorify it."
Medek said he still doesn't know who vandalized the statue, but he suspects it was a rebellious youth who knew nothing of the communist regime.
"Young people who just don't care do these things for fun, with no connection to ideology," he said. "The hostility is not directed toward the events of 1945; the more emotional feelings are toward 1968."
The 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, which ended the Prague Spring of communist leader Alexander Dubcek, undermined the lingering gratitude some Czechs felt for the Soviet Union's role in freeing them from Hitler's occupation.
"The feeling of being grateful disappeared little by little," said historian Petr Joza. "The Soviets were not considered liberators anymore, but occupants."
Decin was actually liberated by Polish Army soldiers, not by Rybalko's troops, although he did pass through on his way to Prague.
At the time of the statue's purchase, Medek said there were some unfair reports in the media. "The press stated that the Town Council didn't know that Rybalko didn't really liberate Decin," he said.
The long-standing confusion about who freed Decin was deliberate, according to Joza. "Rybalko has nothing to do with this town," Joza said. "But the pedestal said he liberated Decin."
The statue was moved without the pedestal, and it now sits without explanation in the grassy cemetery. Rybalko's name is not even mentioned.
"Immediately after World War II, people considered the Red Army to be our liberators," Joza said. "That suited the communist agenda, and through propaganda, they added stories that aren't true."
Another falsehood, Joza said, is that the soldiers' graves at the liberation memorial belong to Russians killed during the war. Russian names, in Cyrillic, are etched on the tombstones, but none of the men buried there was Russian and some were not even killed in battle, he added. Joza said he went through the death records and learned that one of the men was killed in a car accident.
HISTORY OF A STATUE
1945: General Pavel Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army passes through Decin on its way to liberate Prague. Polish troops liberate Decin.
1950s: A liberation memorial is built in Folknare cemetery in Decin.
1975: Statue of Rybalko is built to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the war. Statue is displayed in interior courtyard of Ferox.
1989: Berlin Wall falls, ending communist rule of the Eastern bloc.
1990-2000: Statue of Rybalko is stored in Ferox warehouse.
2000: Town of Decin buys the statue and places it in the liberation memorial complex in Folknare cemetery.
2001: Rybalko is painted red. Two weeks and 16,000 Kc ($420) later, the statue has been cleaned.
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While Czechoslovakia was under communist rule, Decin's Soviet liberation memorial was the site of obligatory two- to three-day celebrations the first week of May to commemorate the end of the war.
Joza said when he was in grammar school, if he didn't have a doctor's note when he was sick, his teachers would make him attend the celebrations anyway. He also remembered laughing with his friends at being forced to go there every year for fireworks and artificial revelry.
Now, Joza said, the local Communist Party organizes a May 8 celebration, but it is attended only by people who want to go.
"The Communist Party doesn't have enough money to pay for much," he said. "It's a busload of retired people who pop out, say a few words and lay a wreath."
Town officials also pay a visit to the liberation memorial on May 8, but to honor and lay wreaths for those who served in the war, not to celebrate the Soviet liberation, Medek said.
"There was a lot of celebration of that in the past," Medek said. "We've had enough."
Ideology and vandalism aside, some in Decin disdain the statue on aesthetic grounds.
"It looks like a dwarf on the grass; A monumental statue should be on a pedestal," Joza said. "It's ugly. It should be in a museum of oddities."
-- Martina Sedlakova and Vojtech Saman contributed to this report.
Kari Neumeyer's e-mail address is
kneumeyer@praguepost.cz
