Ukrainian National Memory Institute urges Kyiv-based confectionery factory to dismantle monument to Karl Marx on its grounds
KYIV. Nov 11 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory has once again urged the administration of the Kyiv-based confectionery factory Roshen to dismantle a monument to Karl Marx, which is installed on its grounds, to comply with the law on de-Communization.
"The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory for the second time forwarded a letter to the administration of the Kyiv-based confectionery factory Roshen to remind it of its obligation to dismantle a monument to Karl Marx in its territory in keeping with a procedure stipulated by Ukrainian law," the institute said in a statement available on its website.
The institute said it had known from addresses by members of the public that a monument to Karl Marx, a leader of international Communist movement and co-author of the Communist Manifesto, was present in the factory's territory.
"The teaching of Marxism served as the basis for the establishment of totalitarian Communist regimes in Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe. The active commemoration of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as the founders of Communist ideology (in particular, by the mass erection of monuments in their honor) was an important component of the Soviet Communist Party's propaganda of a totalitarian Communist regime," the institute said.
Ukrainian law stipulates that a monument to Karl Marx installed in the territory of the Kyiv-based confectionery factory Roshen is a "symbol of a totalitarian Communist regime" and has to be dismantled.
The institute sent its first letter to the factory to remind its administration of the need to dismantle the monument on September 25, 2015 but has still not received an official answer.
Before being privatized, the confectionery factory had been named after Karl Marx.