A monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky was erected in Simferopol. The Russian Orthodox Church called it an insult

In Simferopol, on September 11, a restored monument was erected to the founder of the Cheka, the organizer of the “Red Terror” Felix Dzerzhinsky, report “Crimea.Inform” and “Crimea 24”.

The bust of Dzerzhinsky was installed in the center of Simferopol, on Obyezdnaya Street. The ceremony took place on the 144th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Cheka. As stated in the FSB department, veterans of the security agencies and cadets from school No. 4 were present at the opening.

On the same day, September 11, a monument to Dzerzhinsky have established in Krasnodar – in the courtyard of school # 3, which is under the patronage of the FSB. In 2017, an educational institution at the request of the director appropriated the name of the ideologue of the “Red Terror”.

In the press service of the FSB Directorate for Crimea and Sevastopol statedthat Dzerzhinsky “fought not only against counter-revolution, but also raised the country out of ruin and poverty.” Thanks to Dzerzhinsky, “two thousand bridges were restored, almost three thousand steam locomotives and more than 10 thousand kilometers of railway track were repaired,” the department noted.

In the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the installation of a monument to “Iron Felix”, on the contrary, condemned… A member of the ROC Patriarchal Council for Culture, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, called his appearance an insult and expressed the hope that the Crimeans would demolish the monument. Such monuments “insult the memory of millions of innocent victims of terror,” he said.

Dzerzhinsky headed the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (VChK), which carried out mass executions in 1918-1919. During the Civil War, the Cheka carried out terror against people accused of “involvement in counterrevolutionary activities.” The successors of the Cheka were the OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB and FSB. Today in Russia established more than 40 monuments to Dzerzhinsky.

The most famous monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected on Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow in 1958. In August 1991, it was dismantled against the background of an attempted coup d’etat and transported to a vacant lot near the Tretyakov Gallery (today it stands in the Muzeon). In February of this year, the authorities decided to conduct a survey on the installation of one of two monuments near the FSB building – Dzerzhinsky or Alexander Nevsky. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin amid public criticism canceled vote.