One of the conversations I had in Riga was with a Russian woman in her 60s. Since my goal in Riga was to research memorials, I asked her about them. She recounted what she knew about the memorial to the liberators of Riga in victory park - one of my favorite places in Riga. She told me that the alleged Latvian designer - Gulbis - was not really the man behind it. It was rather the Russian Bugaev. (Both these men are listed among the artists involved in the project.) She said they put Gulbis first to make the project palatable for the Latvians, but then when the political transformation came, Gulbis disconnected himself from the memorial. If any reader here knows more about this story, I would appreciate getting more details about it!

I asked her about the Lenin memorial and how she felt when it came down. She says she never had a relationship to Lenin that was positive. She considers him a criminal. But for her, the Lenin monument was a symbol of her connection to Riga and Latvia. She experienced the removal of the statue as a rejection.

If I could go back to that conversation, I would now ask her if the statue to Barclay de Tolly, which stands across the street from where Lenin once stood, and not only represents a Russian hero, but is also a rallying point for Russian political groups in the city, had since restored her sense of belonging. Did the renewal of the Russian-era de Tolly monument compensate her earlier sense of rejection? It would seem that if Lenin were somehow a symbol of the community, but not only or even at all a positively-laden symbol of ideology, then the de Tolly statue would be a much more positive, inclusive gesture than leaving Lenin standing could ever have been. Taking down Lenin rejects communism, restoring the 1912 statue of the Napoleonic-era Russian General de Tolly acknowledges the role of Russia in Latvia's past and the special place that some of Riga's Russians have in the history of the city.