Zarasai plans to move Soviet soldiers’ remains from Antaliepte centre

Zarasai District Municipality plans to relocate Soviet soldiers’ remains from Antaliepte’s town centre, LRT reported. The municipal administration has opened a tender to move the remains from a burial site beside the Church of the Discovery of the Holy Cross to another cemetery and mark the graves there. Bids are due by November 3, and the municipality has set aside nearly 110,000 euros, although the final cost is uncertain because the number of remains to be moved is unknown.

A document drawn up in 1979 records 272 Soviet soldiers buried in Antaliepte, while 340 names and military ranks are now inscribed on brown granite slabs at the site. A municipal council briefing says historical material suggests there may be four mass graves: two created before 1950 and two in 1981-82. It says the precise number of remains, human bones and bone fragments is unknown.

The briefing also questions whether 272 or 340 people could have been buried on the 379-square-metre plot. It suggests that bones found at original burial locations may have been reburied there, while the later registration card may have counted all Soviet military casualties in the surrounding area.

About 30 Soviet soldiers were first buried in July 1944 in Antaliepte’s former main square after a battle with German forces. The site was later expanded for propaganda purposes, with more remains reburied there in 1950 and in 1981-82. It was renovated in 1976 and refurbished with Russian state funding in 2007.

The municipality plans to move the remains to the Soviet soldiers’ cemetery in Rutiniškis village, where new graves will be created and marked with standard information boards. The new plot is designed for 400 graves, leaving room for any Soviet soldiers’ remains found elsewhere to be moved there.

Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Centre instructed the municipality to remove the remains from Antaliepte’s former central square in December 2024. The so-called Decommunization Commission said the burial site violates a legal ban on promoting totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies in public spaces. It described the site as a place that reinforces and spreads the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s myth of the Great Patriotic War, and said the burials were secondary, formed by transferring remains from original burial places nearby. Šiauliai and Vievis have also moved Soviet soldiers’ remains from their town centres this year.