by Raffaella Gherardi

As an Austrian scholar (and more of the history of the Habsburg Empire and the rise of the Austrian monarchy to a great European power between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) I must confess that when I happened to pass by Schwarzenbergplatz, a larger and more central square in Vienna, in the my frequent wanderings between archives and libraries, I have always felt a sort of personal discomfort in front of the Pharaonic monument erected there by the Soviet command in honor of the Red Army. This immediate reaction on my part was certainly not dictated by the disavowal of the latter’s important role in the fight against Nazism in the Second World War and by the fact that it was the Soviets who were the first to liberate the Austrian capital in 1945, suffering the loss of thousands and thousands of men; the monument in question was intended to remember this in the present and perpetually in the future.
The when of the future was so clear that, after ten occupation, the allied occupation of Vienna ceased and Austria regained its sovereignty, the Soviets (who apparently managed not exactly with velvet the sector of the capital of their competence), before to leave, they had the obligation to supervise and care for the work in question put in writing in the relevant Treaty. In my capacity as a historian and also from the more general point of view of what it can mean for the conscience of a people, however, I could not help wondering what the Austrians ever thought today (heirs as I am not only of a centuries-old and glorious Empire but also of an innovative Republic that had been erected on the ashes of the latter after the First World War) in front of such an imposing monument erected in the heart of their capital and in a very symbolic place of their history for all that the name “Schwarzenberg” by itself is capable of evoking. It is a depth of the most important families (still today the historic and magnificent Schwarzenberg palace overlooks the square of the same name) from their depth leading names of politicians, soldiers, high religious spheres that have marked in Austrian history.
more homage to: the square pays homage, since the O Ancorattocento, and with a large equestrian monument, to the figure of the General in Schwarzenberg, Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg, winner in Leipzig against Napoleon. But whoever arrives today in Schwarzenbergplatz is incomparably much more struck by the majesty and breadth of the monumental complex erected in 1945 “in memory of the heroes of the Red Army”. Inside a spectacular, vast colonnade with a wide semicircle, consisting of twenty-six marble columns eight meters high, stands a base which in turn supports a column on the vault which is placed the bronze statue (perfect example of heroic realism Soviet brand) of a soldier who stands in contralto, almost dominating the entire square, with a machine gun on his chest and holding the flag and a golden shield with the symbols of the Soviet Union in his hands. Numerous writings in Cyrillic characters on the architrave that binds the columns, in the base of the statue and in other parts of the complex and then variously praise the heroism of the red army and its people, as well as orders and Stalin’s appeals of 1945.
Beyond the existence of the aforementioned treaty, aimed at guaranteeing the monumental perenniality of this complex, every time I returned to Vienna and particularly after 1989 I always felt a certain amazement that it was not scratched at all, in all its starts, from the events following the collapse of the USSR onwards, and the Austrian people continued to keep it so intact, there the writings in Cyrillic (symbolic of the original will of Russification?) and also those that appear there about Stalin, who last if it is true that he can figure as the liberator of Vienna from Nazism, he is now also universally recognized as champion of the specter of totalitarianism that exemplifies the world, starting from Europe in the first half of the twentieth century it has learned to know in all its new , devastating internal and external aspects of individual states.
What about the recent Russian aggression / invasion of Ukraine? Putin’s will to power which would surely be perfectly expressed in the monumental complex mentioned above as heir par excellence, as he presents himself, of Soviet power? Did all this leave the latter unharmed by virtue of Austria’s scrupulous respect for the clauses of a treaty imposed by yesterday’s winner? No form of protest by the Viennese in this square so highly symbolic for the many aspects mentioned?
But the civil protest of a free and democratic country against a war that tears apart every principle of international law and of those who take the side of the attacked country was able to find other means of expression, while leaving the aforementioned monument intact and right in the Schwarzenbergplatz scenery. Not only in Austria but also elsewhere some media have reported the fact that one March morning the private surrounding wall of the Schwarzenberg Palace (a wall about 100 meters long of which of course the owners can do what they believe, since they do not have their hands bound by a treaty) appeared entirely painted with the colors of the Ukrainian flag: the order to repaint the entire wall in this sense was given by the current heir of the illustrious family and quickly carried out in one night by a team of workers . Mockery of history? What is certain is that whoever approaches the square and immediately directs his gaze (according to the careful scenography of the monument) towards the majestic and triumphal colonnade and the entire commemorative monumental complex of the Red Army, sees everything against the background of the very long painted wall. with the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag, colors that stand out all the more strongly in the gaps left between the white marble columns …
(from mentepolitica.it)

(© 9Colonne – cite source)