The De Tolly statue at the Esplanade was first unveiled in 1913. In 1915, the statue was dismantled, but the pedestal remained. In 2002, on the initiative of businessman Jevgēņijs Gombergs, a restored replica of the statue was installed. At the time, the entrepreneur also tried to "fit in" the statue of Tsar Peter the Great of Russia into Riga's urban environment.
The dismantling of the monument will cost around 1,400 euros. The municipality plans to dismantle the Barclay de Tolly monument within three months.
The statue will be returned to Gombergs as it was a gift to Riga, while the pedestal will be placed at Varoņu Street 13, where an exhibition of the monuments is planned.
The reason for the dismantling is that the statue is associated with Russian imperialism.
At its meeting on Wednesday, the City Council also decided to dismantle the monument to the writer Andrejs Upīts at the Congress House and the monument to Sudrabu Edžus in Kronvalda Park.
The Sudrabu Edžus monument will be moved from Kronvalda Park to the writer's burial place in Rainis Cemetery.
The Andrejs Upīts monument is to be sawed in half and then reinstalled in the urban environment, said the author of the idea, sculptor and Riga City Council deputy Ivars Drulle (For).
As Drulle explained, the Upīts monument will initially be moved to the territory of the Riga Monuments Agency on Varoņu Street, where it will be sawn in half vertically. After that, a place will be chosen to place it back in the urban environment and the two parts of the monument will be placed side by side at such a distance that a person can pass through them.
According to Drulle's plan, with these changes, the Upītis monument will both reflect the dual nature of Upītis's life - the positive as a writer and the negative as a Soviet collaborator - and symbolize the different sides of each person.
Earlier, a small protest was held in Riga against the dismantling of De Tolly's monument. People also gathered in front of the Riga City Council on Wednesday, shortly before the session of the Council, to protest against the plan to dismantle the monuments in Riga.
This summer, the association "Center of Public Memory" also called on the municipality to demolish, for example, the monument to the ballet dancer Māris Liepa, the more than 160-year-old stones of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and his son in Mangaļsala, and other objects. However, the Riga City Council Coalition does not support dismantling the monument to ballet dancer Māris Liepa, funded by the philanthropists Boriss and Ināra Teterevi and located in front of the National Opera and Ballet. This issue will not be discussed by the municipality in the current session of the City Council.
