A monument to Tadeusz Kościuszko in Solothurn was unveiled on 21 October 2017, two days after the 200th anniversary of his death. He lived and died in the Swiss city. The memorial had stood in a low-lying place without a foundation and needed restoration. The city raised the idea, then refused to consider it for the first four years. Permission followed only after structures, organisations and individuals pressed the case.
The effort involved a large team. It included the Swiss Embassy in Minsk and former ambassador Anna Egger, the mayor and municipal services of Solothurn, the head of a customs warehouse in Poland, and people who worked at the Belarusian embassy in Switzerland, which was not the main organiser. The Maldzis initiative also took part.
The monument is the same memorial, set much higher. A Belarusian boulder was placed under it, on a platform of Belarusian cobblestones where people can walk around, stand nearby, take photographs and lay flowers. Those involved wanted the stone to come from Belarusian fields. They said they had not expected the idea to be so difficult, and the process dragged on for perhaps a year.
Exporting the stone from Belarus to Poland brought many problems, and obstacles appeared at the border. Polish officers, probably five times, walked around the stone looking for what was wrong with it. They sent it for X-rays and asked where the plaque written about Kościuszko was.
Delivery to Switzerland brought a further stop. When the stone was loaded onto a bus, the load on the front axle was a problem. Swiss police halted the vehicle. The driver had violated the law, and a court verdict included a fine. The account says the group did not want to abandon the work.
The same account argues that memory of Belarusian figures should be kept wherever they are. Belarusians live in Switzerland, with a strong community and other Belarusian structures there. Besides Kościuszko, that memory has included Marc Chagall in Zurich and Adam Mickiewicz in Lausanne, and earlier Maria Magdalena Radziwiłł in Fribourg.
On the dispute over whom Kościuszko belongs to, the account says it will not disappear, and that Belarusians are to blame because they forgot him — perhaps, at some point, because they were ordered to. It says Belarusians grew used to treating him as a Polish hero, and that winning a place for him among Belarusians is already difficult, let alone among Poles. Poles, it says, watch the initiatives with surprise that looks amusing and, over time, perhaps alarming, because they see that the efforts will not stop.
Tadeusz Kościuszko is a national hero of Belarus, Poland and the United States, an honorary citizen of France, and the leader of the 1794 uprising against the Russian Empire. He is considered one of the most famous natives of Belarus.