The monument to Barclay de Tolly moved from Riga to Jurmala and became a neighbor of Peter I

The monument to the Russian commander Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, dismantled by decision of the Riga authorities, has found a new home. As Latvian businessman Evgeniy Gomberg reported on his Facebook page (banned in the Russian Federation as extremist), the monument will now stand in the courtyard of his private house in Jurmala.

Evgeny Gomberg was the initiator of the restoration of historical justice and the return to the site of the monument to Barclay de Tolly, lost in the 20th century. The monument to the commander, who had Swedish and German roots and was born in the north of modern Lithuania, was unveiled in Riga in 1913. During the First World War, the sculpture was evacuated to Russia and no trace of it disappeared. The pedestal remained in its place all these years. In 2002, a modern copy of the monument was installed in the same place.

But the current Riga authorities did not need the monument. On October 16, 2024, the Riga City Council voted for the demolition of the monument to Barclay de Tolly, and on October 31 dismantling completed. Since then, the statue has been in the warehouse of the Riga Monument Agency. This was due to the need to make a new pedestal: as it turned out, the statue itself was not a state-protected cultural monument. But its pedestal is registered as an object of historical value. In this regard, during dismantling, the statue was separated from the pedestal and sent to a warehouse, and the initiator of the installation of the recreation of the monument to Barclay de Tolly went to his estate in Jurmala to prepare a new pedestal. When it was ready, the statue was transported to Gomberg’s house.

Photo: Screenshot

“In a new place. Meet him. No one will offend him here,” Gomberg wrote on the social network Facebook (banned in the Russian Federation as extremist), posting a photo of the monument in the courtyard of his house in Jurmala.

Barclay de Tolly (1761-1818) – Russian commander, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, field marshal general. In fact, he served as commander-in-chief of the Russian Army at the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, from the departure of Alexander I from the army to the appointment of Mikhail Ivanovich Kutuzov. In the foreign campaign of the Russian army of 1813-1814, he commanded the united Russian-Prussian army as part of the Allied forces.

The monument to Barclay de Tolly on the site of Eugene Gomberg is the second monument recreated on his initiative and… installed on his site. The field marshal’s neighbor is also a Riga monument to Peter I – preserved in the form of fragments, restored on the initiative of Gomberg and also turned out to be unnecessary to the Riga authorities. On this occasion, local residents recall the words of former President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who, in connection with the installation of a monument to Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly in Riga, donated to the city by Evgeniy Gomberg, said that “every private person has the right to erect obelisks of commanders in his private garden or your home.” The current authorities of Riga follow this “testament”.

Monument to Peter I in the courtyard of Evgeni Gomberg’s house in Jurmala. Photo: Alexandra Bartush/argumenti.ru