KALININGRAD, March 31. /TASS/. Polish authorities are going to dismantle 500 Soviet monuments in the country’s territory, the Polish cultural center in Kaliningrad has said with reference to the Institute of National Remembrance.

"We are counting the sites where Soviet monuments are still found. By June we will come up with an initiative encouraging the local authorities to tear down Soviet monuments before a corresponding law takes effect," the center quotes the Institute of National Remembrance’s president, Lukasz Kaminski, as saying. He argues that the monuments must be eliminated as symbols of the Communist system’s domination over Poland.

The proposal concerns the monuments erected in public places as tokens of gratitude to the Soviet Union. The initiative does not apply to monuments at the graves and cemeteries of Soviet soldiers.

"The Polish state will continue to take care of Red Army cemeteries," the Polish Cultural Center said.

More than 660,000 Soviet soldiers gave their lives for liberating Poland from Nazi occupation. During World War II about six million Poles were killed in clashes with Nazi troops and as a result of Nazi occupation. Recent years have seen repeated cases of vandalism at Soviet military cemeteries.