The Soviet Military Cemetery in Warsaw, Poland was officially opened on May 9, 1950. According to the cemetery’s dedication, it contains the remains of 21,468 Soviet soldiers from the 1st Belorussian Front: 8th Guards Army, 28th, 47th, 48th, 65th, 69th, 70th Armies, 2nd Tank Army, Mechanized Cavalry Group, 6th and 16th Air Armies, 46th Rifle Corps, 2nd and 7th Cavalry Corps and 1st Guards Tank Corps. They are buried in mass graves. The cemetery is located in the Mokotow District, in the central part of Warsaw, near the location of both the Jewish and Polish uprisings. Below is a schematic map of Warsaw showing Warsaw’s districts. The Mokotow district is the area shaded in red.

Ironically the Soviet Union, the country that conspired with Hitler to destroy Poland in 1939, was the same country that five years later became its liberator. For the Poles, the Soviet intervention was at best a mixed blessing. It meant replacing one oppressive system with another. Thus, today, for some the cemetery, and others like it throughout the former Soviet bloc, is now a source of controversy. Some have even demanded that such Soviet memorials be closed and dismantled. Yet the fact remains that in 1944 and 1945 the Soviet armies evicted the Nazis from Poland, thus freeing Poland from Nazi domination. That Joseph Stalin used the war as an opportunity to impose a Communist regime on Poland does not alter that fact. Today the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc are gone. Poland is free. Yet the past lingers on. How Poland and Russia deal with that collective memory is up to the two respective nations to decide.

At the Russian war cemetery of Warsaw, the inscription on the obelisk in the centre of the cemetery reads (in Polish):

‘Pamieci zolnierzy Armii Radzieckiej poleglych o Wyzwolenie Polski spod Okupacji Niemieckiej w Latach 1944-1945.’

Translation:

‘To the memory of the Soviet Army soldiers who fell while liberating Poland from German occupation in the years 1944-1945.'”