The authorities of the US city of Sitka are not considering giving the statue of the town's founder, Russian merchant Alexander Baranov, to any third parties, Alexander Radko, the deputy head of the Russian international cooperation agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, said in a letter to Russian lawmaker Mikhail Shchapov
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th August, 2020) The authorities of the US city of Sitka are not considering giving the statue of the town's founder, Russian merchant Alexander Baranov, to any third parties, Alexander Radko, the deputy head of the Russian international cooperation agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, said in a letter to Russian lawmaker Mikhail Shchapov.
In late June, a group of activists urged the Sitka authorities to remove the Baranov statue, citing the mistreatment of indigenous people. On July 14, the Sitka city assembly adopted a resolution to relocate the Baranov statue from downtown to the Sitka Historical Society Museum. Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that requests to buy the statue had come from the administrations of the Russian cities of Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk and Magadan.
According to the letter obtained by Sputnik, Shchapov asked Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian cultural promotion agency, to provide up-to-date information on the situation with the statue.
"The coordinated position of Russian compatriots, who, under the auspices of the RCC [Russian Community Council] in the United States, collected more than 6,000 signatures in support of preserving the monument in the city center, was not taken into account by the city council. At the moment, the authorities of the city of Sitka are not considering transferring or selling the statue of A. Baranov," the letter read.
Shchapov, in turn, told Sputnik that the US authorities' decision was not fully satisfactory for Russian compatriots.
"The statue will not remain in the same place. But in any case, it will be preserved and transferred to the museum. I believe that this is a lesson for us. We must take this � the memory of people who have done so much for Siberia � seriously to strengthen the positions of Russia. We must find a way to erect such a statue in Irkutsk [in Siberia]," the lawmaker noted.
Statues of several historical figures associated with racism have been removed, toppled or defaced across the United States amid nationwide protests fueled by multiple police-involved killings of African Americans.
Baranov was the first Russian governor of Alaska and the founder of Sitka, the capital of the Russian colonies in North America, in the late 18th-early 19th century. His statue became an issue of controversy among Sitka activists during a larger campaign in the US against monuments of Confederate generals, slave-owners and explorers.
