The statue epitomised imperialism, humiliation, repression and lies. The authorities tried hiding it from view. But the public demand was unstoppable. After heated debate and repeated vandalism (including a mocking string of sausages), the bronze figure was removed by a crane.
It depicted Ivan Konev, in Russian eyes a wartime hero but for Czechs an occupier who masterminded Soviet postwar repression. Erected in Prague by the country’s communist-era puppet rulers, it stood not for liberation but enslavement.
Its fall in April was part of a row about the past that has turned Vladimir Putin into an obsessive amateur historian. During an hour-long speech at an international summit in Moscow in December he read his baffled guests lengthy extracts from a pile of archival documents. Last