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PUBLIC SCULPTURE IN MOSCOW AS MONUMENT AND SITE OF PROTEST

by

Evgenia Abramova

Introduction

There are about 80 monuments to Vladimir Lenin in today‟s Moscow. The figure belongs

to Dmitry Kudinov, the founder and moderator of a LiveJournal community ru_lenin that

through contributions of other Internet bloggers has amassed images of monuments to Lenin

from Russia proper, former Soviet republics and abroad (ru_lenin 2005).1 At the same time the

Soviet-era monuments as material objects are administered by the city authorities. They undergo

restoration, the sites around them are cleared of debris, fallen leaves and snow. The third group

of actors that take an active interest in the Soviet-era monuments is the leftist political groups

and organizations that attach their protest actions to these sites. To the rest of the city‟s

inhabitants, however, these monuments remain largely insignificant, objects amidst other objects

that they can either take some interest in or ignore altogether.

My own interest in the Soviet-era monuments stems from two circumstances, the first of

which being the impossibility to implement artistic projects within Moscow‟s urban space

experienced by local practitioners of contemporary art. The second one is the growth of protest

activity of Moscow‟s diverse political groups, primarily, within the new radical left. I have had a

chance to participate in some of these actions.

1 ru_lenin. Available at <http://ru-lenin.livejournal.com/> (accessed on January 15, 2012).

2

It is in this context of nascent political activism and the general conservatism of the social

sphere that block artistic initiatives that research of Soviet-era monuments becomes particularly

valuable as it allows one to pursue several objectives simultaneously. Firstly, it allows us to

locate the memorial art of the Soviet period within the broader art history. Secondly, it enables

the researcher to trace the evolution of the city‟s practices producing by different social and

political groups. In other words, the Soviet-era monument functions in this article as an

anamorphosis of sorts that pieces together on its surface a unified image composed of disjointed

artistic, social and political practices observed within the urban space.

The article consists of two parts. The first one examines Soviet-era monument as parts of

art history, and in particular, of the history of sculpture. Drawing on the structural analysis of the

concept of “sculpture” proposed by art critic Rosalind Krauss, I show how the development of

sculpture as an art form in Soviet Russia between the late 1910s and early 1930s came to be

blocked. By rejecting the traditions of western modernism and Russian avant-garde, Soviet

sculpture “froze” in a single form suggested by the Socialist Realism – that of a monument.

The Soviet-era monument in today‟s Moscow continues to shape artistic and

administrative practices. The city‟s newer public sculptures remain figurative in form, and

representational in their purposes, for the most part commemorating historical events or

personalities. At the same time, the choice of both the figurative form and of the prevailing

objects of representation is reflective first and furthermost of the economic interests and aesthetic

tastes of the local elite. In this sense, Moscow‟s new monuments are realistic, outdated and anti-

democratic.

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The second part of the article focuses on the Soviet-era monuments as sites of protest that

attract diverse social and political groups that “produce”, to use philosopher Henri Lefebvre‟s

term, urban space. For those groups, the site “by the monument” has become the place of

struggle for their rights. In this case any Soviet-era monument that occupies vast (if viewed from

the stand point of today‟s Moscow) spaces in squares, parks and public gardens, yet unclaimed

for urban densification and construction sites, functions as a protector and guardian of open, not-

yet-privatized urban spaces and of their potential social significance. Moreover, there are certain

groups to whom urban space remains one of the very few available forums (Internet is the other

one), where they can make their political stance known, and to have an opportunity to address

the society.

I. Public sculpture in Moscow: from monument to…monument

In her article “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” Rosalind Krauss examined the historical

conception of sculpture and argued that it was based on the understanding of sculpture as a

monument (Krauss 1978. 227-90).2 This understanding emerged in the 200s and dates back to

the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. At the time the concept of sculpture was

ascribed three persistent characteristics: it was figurative (a naturalistic image of a human or an

animal); it was representational (represented a historical figure or event); located in a particular

spot and oftentimes mounted on top of a pedestal. Later, beginning with the late nineteenth

century works of Rodin, sculpture began to gradually lose its figurative, representational quality,

2 Krauss, Rosalind. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” (1978) in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and

Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1985. 227-90.

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its attachment to particular place and its pedestal. Sculpture started to represent itself first and

furthermost, with its form and materials taking on an increasing significance.

For the Soviet sculpture, however, this transformation was short-lived, brought to an

abrupt halt by the 1918 decree of the Council of People‟s Commissars “On Monuments of the

Republic” (later termed “Monumental Propaganda Plan”)3. The decree distinguished between

two types of monuments. The first type encompassed monuments erected to glorify and honor

“the tsars and their servants” that possessed “neither artistic nor historical value”. These “ugly

molten images” were to be toppled and dismantled. The other category included those

monuments that were erected as a result of a nation-wide contest with the competing entries

publicly exhibited to allow the “masses” to see and to evaluate them. The monuments of this

later category were called on to signify - and glorify – “the great era of the Russian Socialist

Revolution.”4

By 1919 the avant-garde experiments in revolutionary celebrations, that often involved

sculptures, were also discontinued. Moscow‟s City Council of Workers and Soldiers‟ Deputies

ruled that the projects for the revolutionary celebrations offered by the leftist avant-garde artists

lacked the necessary propagandistic force, while the futurist and cubist works of art were

considered to be excessively formalistic and incomprehensible to the proletariat masses. This

decision resulted in a resolution, which was passed by the Moscow‟s Soviet Presidium on March

24 and which stated:

3 The Council of the People‟s Commissars of the RSFSR. “On Monuments of the Republic” decree

(12.04.1918) in Electronic Library of the History department of the Moscow State University. Available

at <http://www.hist.msu.ru/ER/Etext/DEKRET/18-04-12.htm> (accessed 15 January 2012).

4 Ibid.

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All Moscow‟s artistic affairs should be carried out in close association with and under the

strict control of the Moscow proletariat […], the sub-committee is guided by neutrality in

relation to different artistic tendencies, placing the aesthetic needs of the proletariat

higher than the pretensions of individual artistic groups. 5

Starting in 1918, when the monument to Marx and Engels was unveiled in Teatral‟naya

Square in Moscow, the sculptural form “solidified” or ”froze” into a monumental form.

Monuments to Lenin first appeared in 1924, monuments to Stalin followed in 1933 and were

erected up until his death in 1953. A typical example of this reductionist understanding of

sculpture as a monumental form was the winning project of the Palace of Soviets that envisaged

the building as a pedestal to the colossal statue of Lenin (Atarov 1940).6

The last decision pertaining to the construction of monuments was made in 1933 when

“Literaturnaya Gazeta” published an article by Anatoly Lunacharsky (by then no longer the

People‟s Commissar of Enlightenment) which was titled “Lenin on the Question of Monumental

Propaganda” (Lunacharsky 1933).7 The article spoke about the need to educate and enlighten the

masses and to propagate the ideas of the Socialist Revolution through the erection of

monuments. It argued that this task was to be carried out jointly by the Council of People‟s

Commissars, the artists and the proletariat. With the passing of time this article became

5 Tolstaya, V. P. (ed.). Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo. Oformlenie prazdnestv. Moscow: Iskusstvo,

1984. 23.

6 Atarov, N. S. Dvorets Sovetov. (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1940) in Paperny, Vladimir. Kultura 2.

Moscow: NLO, 2006. 324. .

7 Lunacharsky, Anatoly. “Lenin on Monumental Propaganda”, in Literaturnaya gazeta no. 4-5

(29.01.1933). Available at <http://lunacharsky.newgod.su/lib/vospominaniya-i-vpechatleniya/lenin-o-

monumentalnoj-propagande> (accessed 15 January 2012).

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canonical, quoted in the introductions to each and every book dedicated to the study of Soviet

monuments.

Khrushchev‟s so-called “Thaw” did not bring about any significant changes in the

conceptualization and practice of Soviet monumental sculpture. A monument to poet Vladimir

Mayakovsky was unveiled in 1958 in Moscow in a square named after him, and its form was not

much different from that of the prevailing monuments to Lenin. The sculptor, Aleksandr

Kybal‟nikov, had authored monuments to Lenin in Moscow (the square in front of Yaroslavsky

railway station) and in Saratov. Furthermore, the same year saw the inauguration of a monument

to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the director of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat

Counter-revolution and Sabotage and the head of the Soviet secret police, unveiled in front of the

Committee for State Security [Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti - KGB] headquarters.

Both of these monuments- the statues of Dzerzhinsky and Mayakovsky – illustrate two historical

and cultural transformations. The toppling of the memorial to Dzerzhinsky during the August

coup of 1991 signaled the end of the “Soviet project” and the attendant transformation of artistic

practices that had also pre-configured the significance of the monument to Mayakovsky.

The toppling of the monument to Dzerzhinsky became a historical, landmark event,

epitomizing the collapse of the Soviet Union; the photos of the cheering crowds removing the

statue have been a classic illustration of the event for the last 20 years. The dismantling of the

statue is thus interpreted as having been set in motion by the “spontaneous release of

revolutionary energy.”8 Among the appeals voiced by the participants of the event there were

8 Kaftan, Larisa. “Sergey Stankevitch, former political advisor to president Yeltsin: „A 26-ton Iron Felix

was hanging precariously above the stormy crowd‟” in Komsomol’skaya Pravda (08.08.2011).

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those calling on the crowd to storm the KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. The sculpture

of Dzerzhinsky was moved to the Central House of Artists at Krymsky Val, where a Muzeon

sculpture park (also known as the Fallen Monument Park) was established in 1992. The

monument‟s pedestal remained standing on the Lubyanka (formerly Dzerzhinsky Square) for a

while, before it, too, was brought to Krymsky Val. In 2011 the monument, which by then had

been mounted back on its pedestal, was assigned a special place on the park‟s main avenue.

Occasionally there are calls to return the monument to its original spot.

However, by 1995 the Lubyanka Square became one of the sites for a new artistic

“utterance” produced by the so-called Moscow‟s “radical actionism”, an evidence not only of the

emergence of contemporary art and its practices in the city, but also of the neo-liberal ideology

and economy, that had gradually begun to appropriate the formerly socialist urban space.

Aleksandr Brener‟s action called “What David has left undone” introduced a new figure -

a commercial director - as someone in the service of private capital in Russia.9 The artist thus

described his performance: “I crossed a thick flow of traffic around the spot where the

monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky was previously standing, I was waving my hands, screaming:

Hello, I am your new commercial director.”10 Imagining the artist as a biblical David of sorts,

Brener addressed his action to the Goliath - the office of the Federal Security Service housed in

the former KGB headquarters – arguing that the job of those who had toppled the monument to

9 Brener, Aleksandr. “What David has left undone?” (1995). Available at

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp6myKgkISU&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLF78A1

E386BB17D34> (accessed 15 January 2012).

10 Kovalev, Aleksei. Rossiisky Auktsionizm [Russian Actionism]. Moscow: WAM. №28-29. 2007: 188.

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Dzerzhinsky was not yet done, but rather engulfed by the new priorities of the day: the original

accumulation of capital and consumption.

In 1993 Anatoly Osmolovsky presented another action, that, too, asserted new artistic

practices. As part of a joint Russian-Dutch project “Exchange” he used a construction crane to

climb on top of Mayakovsky‟s monument on what was now Triumfal‟naya Square (former

Mayakovsky Square). The action was called “a Voyage of Netsezudik to Brobdingnag”, which

alluded to the traditions of avant-garde: the Dada and the Russian Futurism. Thus, through a

social gesture rooted in the city space the performance forged a connection between the early

twentieth century Russian avant-garde, the Soviet art as its heir and the new Russian art that by

the 1990s was becoming part of the international art scene.

Throughout the 1990s alongside the rise of Russian actionism, Moscow saw the erection

of new monuments, among which Zurab Tsereteli‟s monument to Peter the Great has caused the

biggest public controversy. The giant statue to commemorate 300 years of the Russian Navy,

stands on an artificial island in the middle of the Moskva River with the Cathedral of Christ the

Savior in the background. By 1997 when it was erected, the official policies concerning the

construction of monuments in the city had already been widely regarded by the public as largely

anti-democratic and voluntaristic, ignoring the opinions of the inhabitants of the city and guided

first and furthermost by consideration of commercial profit. By 1997 Zurab Tsereteli had already

received a number of municipal art commissions, such as the set of bronze statues for the mall on

Manezhnaya Square and the War Memorial Complex on Poklonnaya Gora commemorating the

50th

anniversary of the Soviet Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Besides, in 1997 Tsereteli was

appointed acting president of the Russian Academy of Arts (he holds the office up to this day) –

an institution that has inherited and perpetuated the traditions of Socialist Realism.

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Responding to the critics of his project, angered by the absence of public discussion

preceding the construction of the monument, Tsereteli argued that “the planning committee to

celebrate 300 years of the Russian Navy has made the decision to erect the monument to Peter

the Great under such time constraints that there could be no question whatsoever of a nation-

wide design competition for the best project.”11

Yet he also claimed that the projects for the

monument to Peter the Great had been evaluated “by a rather meticulous panel of experts from

Moscow‟s Chief Architectural and Planning Bureau. The works have passed through the Artistic,

Academic and City-planning councils. They have also been reviewed by a special commission of

military historians and the marines, who were particularly scrupulous.”12

The first attempt at removing the monument took place in 1997, while the assembling of

the monument was still underway. It was undertaken by Marat Guelman and leftists activists.

According to Guelman, “Tsereteli has mixed up the history of art with the Guiness Books of

World Records. His creations simply do not exist for the history of art” (Guelman 1998).13

Besides, Guelman claimed that Tsereteli was a provincial artist, in whom the international public

took no interest whatsoever.

A citizen‟s action group suggested a referendum upon the question of the monument‟s

dismantlement. However, this idea was eventually turned down since the preliminary public

opinion surveys indicated that 70% of the city‟s population spoke in favor of keeping the

11

Tsereteli, Zurab. “Novomu obschestvy nyzhny novye obrazy” [New society needs new images] in

Nezavisimaya gazeta (28.08.1998).

12 Ibid.

13 Poliakova, Yulia. “Marat Guelman is a shock!” in Ogonyok (04.05.1998).

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monument in its place, a figure which according to Guelman, reflected the political popularity of

the Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. Furthermore, around the same time a monument to Emperor

Nicholas II was blown up in Moscow region with the members of the groups that called

themselves “RKKA: The Workers‟ and Peasants‟ Red Army” and “NKVD: The Peoples‟

Commissariat for the Internal Affairs” claiming responsibility for the blast. This, too, worked to

discourage proponents of the referendum, who finally decided not to proceed with the idea.

Guelman argued that “the issue cannot be addressed as long as they are blowing up monuments

in this country motivated by political convictions” (Guelman 1998).14

The second attempt to remove the statue of Peter I was undertaken after the failure of the

referendum initiative. An organization called “Revolutionary Military Council” announced that

the monument was mined, adding that the activists decided not to detonate the bomb so as to

prevent human casualties. The organizers claimed that their action expressed their protest against

the government‟s intentions to give Lenin‟s mummy a proper burial and in general, were

targeting “the democratic regime” and the “anti-national government.” Similar reasons were

given by the activists of RKKA and NKVD who had blown up the monument to Nicholas II. The

story ended in a 2002 court verdict: for their part in the mining of the monument to Peter I and

the explosion of the monument to Nicholas II members of the Revolutionary Military Council,

RKKA and NKVD were variously sentenced to up to 11 years in prison.

Renewed attempts to remove the statue of Peter the Great that followed in 2010 testify to

the fact that the monument remains a “trauma” to the city. After the abrupt toppling of Moscow

14

Kostikov, Roman. “Snosu Petra pomeshal vzryv Nikolaya” [The blowing up of Nicholas prevented the

demolition of Peter] in Kommersant (12.02.1998).

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mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Marat Guelman, who by 2010 had been actively cooperating with the

Kremlin‟s “United Russia” party within the framework of his new project “Cultural Alliance”,

came up with a new idea concerning the fate of the monument, suggesting that the statue be

shipped to a different location, better yet – to a different city.

At the same time, the public outcry triggered by the construction of the monument to

Peter I and the resultant public protests have paved the way for the creation of a administrative

mechanism of decision-making with regard to the erection of monuments in the city of Moscow.

They also worked to solve the issue of keeping the inventory of the Soviet-time monuments and

paying for their upkeep, thus allowing the city to preserve those of its Soviet memorials that had

not been dismantled in the 1990s, or that had crumbled for lack of proper upkeep.

In 2004 the city‟s authorities passed a new law regarding public sculpture and

monumental art in Moscow. It put in place a specific procedure: for any monument to be set up,

the commission of experts on monumental art at the Moscow City Duma had to review the

application or proposal it received, drawing on the opinions of the heads of local municipalities

and of relevant experts. It would then organize a competition for the best project, the results of

which had to be endorsed by the government of Moscow and the Mayor himself before any

monument could be erected. It was stipulated that the proposal for a new monumental project can

be submitted by “private citizens, corporate entities, city authorities and local municipalities of

the city of Moscow alike.

The democratic procedure notwithstanding, the law has not only failed to alter the

essentially anti-democratic situation of Moscow‟s policies vis-à-vis monumental sculpture, but

also ultimately worked to exacerbate it. Not only do the dominating municipal and federal lobby

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groups and their political and ideological agendas have the upper hand in deciding the fate of

particular projects, thereby thoroughly corrupting the entire procedure of decision-making. The

law has also deepened the “aesthetical rift” between contemporary art and traditional art within

the space of the city. Typically, a new monument in Moscow would formally draw on the

tradition of Socialist Realism while completely disregarding any other artistic language, be it

modernist or post-modernist paradigms of public art and community-based art. These

monuments do not simply fail to meet the challenges of today‟s urban development, they fail to

acknowledge and problematize the very existence of these challenges altogether, facing back,

into the past, and recycling the worn-out Soviet ideological clichés of the yesteryear.

Not a single contemporary artist or sculptor has ever taken part in the competitions

organized by Moscow‟s Commission on Monumental Art. Yet at the same time, between 1991

and 2008 the Russian Academy of Arts, headed by Zurab Tsereteli, has authored about 90% of

all monumental projects erected in Moscow.15

Nina Moleva, an art critic and a former member of the Commission (she left it in 2008)

who has described its work claims that:

there is a list of spots, compiled by Moscow‟s Commission on Architecture and Planning,

that are available for potential monumental projects. Naturally, well-positioned and

influential sculptors make sure to grab the best spots….Since a monumental project is

15

Poliakova, Yelena. “Deiatel‟nost‟ gosudarstvennykh organov i obschestvennykh organizatsii goroda

Moskvy po sozdaniu, sokhraneniuu i ispol‟zovaniu proizvedenii monumental‟no-dekorativnogo

iskusstva.” [State policy and the policies of public groups regarding the creation, preservation and use of

the works of monumental and decorative art.]. Synopsis of a Ph.D. dissertation in history. (Moscow,

2009).

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now mostly a way of money-laundering, nobody really cares who this monument is

commemorating (Moleva 2011).16

The recent example, in which the interests of several groups of the elite converged at first

only to part ways later on, is the competition for the monument to Russia‟s first President Boris

Yeltsin. The competition was initiated in 2007 by Igor Markin, a businessman, collector of non-

conformist and contemporary art and owner of the first private Museum of Contemporary Art in

Moscow. The idea received the backing of Tatyana Yumasheva, Yeltsin‟s daughter and head of

the Boris Yeltsin Foundation. The winning project by Dmitry Kavarga was selected though an

open vote that took place both on-line (at Markin‟s web-site) and off-line (at his Museum). The

monument was to be later erected in Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow.

According to Markin, however, the Boris Yeltsin Foundation

had merely agreed to contribute a small sum of $30,000 that was only enough to cover

the organizational costs. After the popular vote that selected Kavarga‟s rather radical

project, Tatyana Yumasheva and the Foundation she heads announced that they did not

like the project and refused to fund its construction. Yes, as simple as that: they gave their

word and then they took it back...Real “big shots” these people are. “The Family”,

motherfuckers. Scamming and conning people is a usual thing (Markin 2010).17

16

Moleva, Nina. “Pamiatniki” [Monuments] in Bolshoy Gorod (11.07.2011) Available at

<http://www.bg.ru/article/8894/> (accessed 15 January 2012).

17 Art4-ru [Igor Markin] 14 January 2010. Available at <http://art4-ru.livejournal.com/163965.html>

(accessed 15 January 2012).

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Needless to say that Kavarga‟s project was an abstract composition made of black shiny

metal, a monument to deconstruction and decomposition, of orderliness engulfed by chaos,

without which new creation is not possible”. (see Fig. 1).18

Fig. 1. The Boris Yeltisn monument project by Dmitry Kavarga. Source: Art4.ru (2007).

The case of the competition for the Boris Yeltsin monument has demonstrated that there

is hardly any chance for an abstract monument to be erected in today‟s Moscow. The very

participation of contemporary artists in the implementation of projects with the space of the city

has been rendered impossible. The city authorities and the Russian Academy of Arts have

monopolized the practice of monument building. If viewed against this background, the artistic

practices of the 1990s, and Moscow‟s radical auctionism in particular, are beginning to take on

new significance and relevance as they allow for the new strategies of working with the urban

space, of re-claiming and re-producing it anew.

II. Urban Space: The Site “By the Monument” as a Site of Protest

18

Art4.ru [Igor Markin] 13 September 2007. Available at

<http://www.art4.ru/ru/about/detail.php?ID=2961> (accessed 15 January 2012).

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The post-Soviet Moscow has travelled all the way from a socialist city to the neo-liberal

one, the site of a gradual transition from the anarchy of the 1990s to the partnership of the state

and private business of the early 2000s, in which, as David Harvey argued, the interests of the

state have come to be replaced by the interests of private capital (Harvey 2006).19

As industries

were being gradually relocated beyond the city limits, the capital city was becoming a

commercial and financial center. The growth of the “third sector” has led to the spread of

precarious employment and intensified social inequality that has also become mapped

residentially, with poorer neighborhoods differing markedly from the more prosperous ones.

Diverse protest groups have taken an active part in these transformations while standing

up for their collective identity and civil rights within the space of the city. Their activity can be

regarded as a grass root initiative, based on the Lefebvrian understanding of urban space

(Lefebvre 1991).20

Henri Lefebvre spoke about urban space as something bigger than a social

product or a thing – or agglomeration of things. To him it is rather a social construction deeply

enmeshed in actual practices and social relations that project themselves onto the space of the

city thereby producing this space. In this sense, a monument that was erected by someone, in the

interest of someone and for particular ends is more than just a sculpture confined to the domain

of signs and symbols. It is being perpetually re-defined or re-invented by particular social

practices at any given moment of time. Therefore, one has to look at Moscow‟s monumental

sculpture as first and furthermost a site of ideological and political strife, where political

19

Harvey, David. “Neo-Liberalism and the Restoration of Class Power,” Prognosis 2(6) (2006): 9-56.

20 Lefebvre, Henri. The production of space. English translation by Nicholson-Smith, Donald. 1991.

Malden, MA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 1991.

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interests, ideals and agendas of diverse social groups collide. Being “out there” in the city and

“by the monument” is essentially a gesture of making one‟s social or political stance known.

Certain groups have no other form of action at their disposal but this since their access to other

spaces – that of politics, mass-media or contemporary art – is blocked.

Several spaces “by the monument” have been produced in Moscow between 1991 and

2011.21

First and furthermost, it is the monument to Karl Marx in the Revolution Square. The

second Soviet-era monument to be mentioned in this respect is the monument to Lenin in

Kaluzhskaya Square. The third one is the monument to poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in

Triumfal‟naya Square. These monuments and the spaces around have come to serve as public

forums for political pronouncements. From 2006 on Bolotnaya Square and its monument to Illya

Repin has been the popular protest site. Transformations in social practices regarding these

monuments that have been underway over the last two decades illustrate the dynamics of

interaction and the ever-evolving power configurations among different groups.

Between 1991 and 2001 left-wing movements and parties – the Communist party

(KPRF), “Trudovaya Rossiia”, “Officers‟ Union”, Federation of Independent Unions, etc. were

the principal initiators and participants of demonstrations in Moscow. They regarded the Soviet-

21

The article considers only the most well-known monuments that were erected in Moscow between 1917

and 1991. Yet Moscow has several other notable monuments that, too, are sites of political and public

actions: a monument to poet Aleksandr Pushkin on Pushkin Square, monument to playwright Aleksandr

Griboedov near Chistye Prudy, the Solovki Stone in Lubyanka Square that commemorates victims of

political purges, monument to the heroes of the 1905-1907 Revolution in Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava,

monument to botanist and physiologist Kliment Timiryazev in Tverskoy Boulevard, etc.

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era monuments to Marx or Lenin as ideologically and politically significant and so they staged

their actions near these monuments, be it the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the

October revolution (November 7), the International Labor Day (May 1), Victory Day (May 9), or

the Defender of the Motherland Day (February 23). Up until 2001 both the Revolution Square

and Kaluzhskaya Square had been appropriated by the left-wing groups, parties and movements,

protesting against capitalism, privatization, the Belavezha Accords (that dissolved the USSR),

and calling for the reunification of the Soviet Union, nationalization of private property and the

transfer of power to the people‟s Soviets. The situation changed dramatically in 2001, when the

representatives of the pro-Kremlin youth movement “Walking Together” [Idushchie Vmeste]

took to the streets (traditionally filled with members of the left-wing groups) on November 7

whereby claiming publicly for the first time that the significance and meaning of this holiday had

been altered. While members of the left-wing groups celebrated the anniversary of the Great

October Socialist Revolution, the “Walking Together” was busy celebrating the Day of Accord

and Reconciliation, introduced by a presidential decree of Boris Yeltsin back in 1996 in order to

“assuage the confrontation and reconcile the different strata of the Russian society.”22

Although

this time around the “Walking Together” chose a different itinerary for their procession – from

the “Park Kul‟tury” metro station to “Kropotkinskaya”, which did not intersect with the left-wing

demonstration, they soon moved their public actions and demonstrations to far less “neutral”

spaces and sites. They began to stage their actions in both the Revolution Square and in

Kaluzhskaya Square. In 2002 they were allotted a yet another site – the Red Square – which was

why the Communist party was not allowed to hold its annual celebrations there on November 7.

22

Presidential decree “On the Day of Reconciliation and Accord” (07.11.1996) №1537 Available at

<http://document.kremlin.ru/doc.asp?ID=079721> (accessed 15 January 2012).

18

Furthermore, according to the amendments to the labor code introduced in 2004,

November 7 was no longer a day off, which caused much outcry from the left-wing groups. The

amendments, however, were endorsed by the “Walking Together” group that argued that “there

are too many tragic events associated with this day, so if anyone cherishes November 7 as a

historical date, they are free to celebrate it privately with their families.”23

It was then that a new

official holiday was introduced that became a substitute day-off: November 4, the Day of

National Unity, that from the year 2006 on has been hijacked by the nationalist Movement

Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and their rally that came to be known as the “Russian

March”. The very first rally of the nationalist groups took place near the Soviet-era monument to

Leo Tolstoy in Devichie Pole. However, the spot of the prospective rally was determined in the

course of the negotiations between the organizers and the authorities. Later on these actions took

place in different neighborhoods (including Bolotnaya Square) all across Moscow.

In 2004 the federal government ratified amendments to the law “On gatherings,

demonstrations, rallies, processions and picketing” that circumscribed citizens‟ rights to organize

actions in the city. In 2007 the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov supplemented these restrictions

with two new normative acts that hinder any public action in the city for safety considerations,

obstructing them with impenetrable bureaucratic regulations and focusing specifically on the

administration of public spaces around monuments. Any application for a public gathering or

rally is considered from the point of view of the monument‟s historical and cultural significance,

and of its current physical state. Furthermore, the space around the monument should compile

23

Kuz‟min, Vladimir. „Rossiiyanam dobavili rabochikh dnei” [Russians have had extra working days

added to them] in Rossiiskaya Gazeta (24.11.2004).

19

with the norms of the maximum occupancy, restricted to two people per one square meter of

unobstructed space.

As the spaces “by the monument” in Moscow‟s downtown are increasingly claimed by

other political groups for their rallies and demonstrations, left-wing groups are losing their

monopoly on public protest in these spaces. The spaces themselves are thus stripped off the

single ideological and historical connotation that they have previously upheld, which works to

diversify the social practices associated with these sites. At the same time, the new groups that

came to occupy these spaces not only asserted their identity, but also preserved their autonomy,

their lack of symbolic association with either the site and the monument, or the protest actions,

past or future, of other political groups in these sites.

Hence, by 2011 the monument to Marx in the Revolution Square had become the space

where not only the traditional, “old” leftist groups, or the New radical Left (the Avant-garde of

the Red Youth, the Left Front, the National-Bolshevik party, the Union of the Communist Youth

and other groups that joined the protests organized by KPRF around the year 2005) would come

to articulate their position. Deceived investors, victims of fraud schemes in participatory share

construction of private housing, a coalition to protect Moscow‟s architectural heritage from the

devastating town-planning policies of the authorities and other groups also began to organize

their pickets and protest actions here. From 2009 on socialists, environmental activists and public

activists have been holding their annual Day of Wrath rallies in the square to protest against the

deteriorating social-economic situation in the country. In 2010 the square became the site of

groups that focused on the copyright enforcement or the environmental issues. Transhumanists

have also claimed their civil right to stage protests here. And finally, KPRF started to hold

annual celebrations of Stalin‟s birthday by the monument to Marx.

20

Thus, in the course of twenty years this site in the downtown Moscow has become so

popular that any public action staged in the square no longer carries one clear-cut historical,

ideological or political connotation. Yet at the same time, every public or political group that

articulated its civil claims in this site has assigned its own connotations to it that distinguish this

particular group from others. The original historical symbolism of the site is being ritually

reaffirmed every year through the political actions of the KPRF and the New Left.

The monument to Mayakovsky in Triumfal‟naya Square has had a different story. In the

beginning the emergence of new social and political groups at this site all claiming it as their

own triggered rivalry among them that later led to political conflicts and violence. The city

authorities, represented by one of these groups, were guided by political considerations when

deciding upon the application of the other group that, too, sought to organize its action at the site.

At the same time, the city bureaucrats were merely carrying out their bureaucratic function when

they endorsed the first application that came on time and rejected the second one, which arrived

“after the deadline”.

Between 1991 and 2000 Triumfal‟naya Square drew supporters of democratic

organizations and human rights advocacy groups, such as “Democratic Union of Russia”,

“Democratic Choice of Russia”, The Moscow Anti-fascist Center and others. Beginning in 2000

the National-Bolshevik party, the Avant-garde of the Red Youth and the Union of Communist

Youth have been staging their rallies in the square in the context of the International Anti-

Capitalist Day. In 2006 a coalition of democratic and radical left-wing movements with

participation of human rights advocacy groups organized the Dissenters March, that from 2009

21

on came to be replaced by what came to be known as Strategy-31.24

The participants of the

March protested against “the curtailing of civil and social rights and freedoms of the citizens, and

against the destruction of the foundations of Russia‟s constitutional system carried out by the

current regime in the country.”25

Through a series of civic protest “Strategy-31” sought to

organize a civil movement in support of basic democratic rights, such as the right to peaceful

assembly guaranteed by Article 31 of the Russian Constitution. These actions were held in

Triumfal‟naya Square on the 31st of every month with 31 days.

The pro-Kremlin political youth movements, such as “Young Russia”, “Ours!”, and “The

Young Guard”, the youth wing of the United Russia party have, become the key contestants for

this site. They made sure to apply to the authorities with an application for their own actions

scheduled to take place at the same time on respective dates, whereby effectively blocking the

initiatives proposed by other political groups, first and furthermost, those planned by the

supporters of Strategy-31. The groups were literally trying to outdo each other in grabbing the

earlier place in line of those waiting to submit their applications for a rally. The activists of the

National-Bolshevik party even got into fist fights with the activists of the pro-Putin “Young

Russia” at the doors of the mayor‟s office. The situation dramatically escalated in December

2009, when the “Young Russia” applied to the Moscow government with a proposal to stage a

Blood Donor Day rally in Triumfal‟naya Square on the 31 of December making it impossible for

the organizers of Strategy-31 to hold their own regular rally at the site and leading to the arrests

24

The coalition comprised the National Bolshevik Party, United Civil Front, Russian People's Democratic

Union and the Republican Party of Russia.

25 The All-Russian United Civil Congress “The Other Russia” Available at

<http://www.theotherrussia.ru/press/> (accessed 15 January 2012).

22

of some of the “dissenters” by the police. In August 2010 the authorities initiated an

archeological excavation at the site according to its ordinance “On the renovation of the hotel

Peking and the comprehensive development of the adjoining area” and closed Triumfal‟naya

Square to protestors. However, the organizers of Strategy-31 continued to perceive

Triumfal‟naya Square as the only appropriate site for their protest rallies, regardless of whether

the city authorities agreed to sanction them or not. That is exactly why most of the actions held

in Tiumfal‟naya Square usually ended up in clashes between the protestors and the police,

detentions of the participants and court sentences.

During the protest actions the police usually put up special metal fences to cordon off the

monument to Mayakovsky and to block access to it from the activists. This worked to literally

erase the monument from the events that were largely enfolding beyond this metal fence. This is

clearly illustrated by the photographs and videos taken during the events – the monument itself

rarely makes it into the frame of the picture.

Yet, it was the monument to Mayakovsky that became a significant object for the

Maykovsky‟s Readings launched in 2009 by Matvey Krylov, a National Bolshevik activist and

member of the umbrella coalition group “The Other Russia”. The readings drew on the “tradition

of poetry readings that originate in Triumfal‟naya Square 50 years ago. This tradition is closely

associated not only with the manifestation of civic consciousness, but also with the figure of

Vladimir Mayakovsky, since it was born on the day when a monument to Mayakovsky was

unveiled here and when unprompted, people began to read the verse of the people‟s poet,

23

beloved by everyone. They read the poetry permeated with hatred to injustice, disdain for luxury

and wealth, but also with the pride for an ordinary person.” (see Fig. 2).26

Fig. 1. Matvey Krylov. Event poster for Mayakovsky‟s Readings. Source: k-

front.livejournal.com (June 26, 2011).

Thus, Mayakovsky‟s Readings re-actualized the Soviet monument within the space of the

city by incorporating it into anti-liberal rhetoric. It also drew on the Soviet-era mythology of the

poet himself as a “people‟s poet” as well as on the short-lived tradition of poetry readings at the

site of the monument to Mayakovsky that existed between 1958 and 1961 and that has later taken

26

Creative Association «K-Front» 19 August 2009. Available at <http://k-

front.livejournal.com/2009/08/19/>(accessed 15 January 2012).

24

on a symbolic meaning in the discussions of Khrushchev‟s “Thaw”. Furthermore, the poetry

readings of the late 2000s gestured back to the events of 1961 when the active participants of

these gatherings, Eduard Kuznetsov and Vladimir Osipov were arrested, which spelled the end of

the poetry readings by the monument. Tacit rehabilitation of Stalinism followed suit. Conscious

of the symbolic legacy of the monument, Strategy-31 aims at preventing similar blocking of civil

initiatives in the future.

A monument to painter Ilya Repin in Bolotnaya Square is yet another instance of the

production of space by social groups. The monument itself has no significance to the diverse

movements that stage their actions at the site, attracted by the square‟s relatively large size that

allows for mass gatherings. In their eyes it merely functions as the focal point of the site from the

purely architectural point of view. The square was the site of gatherings of both nationalistic and

anti-fascist groups, as well as of the liberal movement “Solidarity”, it has variously seen an anti-

Semitic rally, a rally against abuses and arbitrariness of the police and a rally against the hike in

petrol prices. Back in 2010 there were talks of transforming the Bolotnaya Square into a sort of

Moscow‟s “Hyde park”, but these plans have never come to fruition. All in all, diverse protest

groups have regarded the Square as a remote site, its location outside the downtown made it by

far less popular than the Revolution Square or Triumfal‟naya Square.

However, in the late 2011 Bolotnaya Square attained new significance as the site of mass

rally “For Fair Parliamentary Elections” that according to different estimates drew anywhere

between 25 and 60 thousand of people. The Solidarity party that masterminded the rally, initially

planned on holding it on the Revolution Square. When this plan fell through and the rally was

moved to Bolotnaya Square after the organizers‟ negotiations with the mayor‟s office, Eduard

Limonov, the leader of the National Bolsheviks considered this to be an inacceptable concession

25

to the authorities. The conflict, political at its core, was resolved during the rally that was

characterized by the participation of a broad spectrum of political and social forces that would

normally be in confrontation with each other. However, no clashes were reported between the

supporters of nationalist and anti-fascist groups, and neither were there any clashes between the

participants of the rally and the police. Moreover, each group had a chance to articulate its stance

and claims. Besides the above-mentioned groups that participated in the rally there were also

feminists, activists of the LGBT community, contemporary artists, members of the Russian

socialist movement, of the Committee for the Workers‟ International, of the Pirate Party of

Russia and of the anti-fascist “January 19 Committee”. Side by side with these groups one could

also see the representatives of the ultra-right wing groups, such as the “Slavic Union”, Russian

public movement and of the National-Socialist Initiative. This, of course, notwithstanding

ordinary citizens who were not members of any of the above-mentioned groups who came to the

rally in order to claim back their civil rights and to protest against the forged results of the

parliamentary elections.

Although the Bolotnaya Square rally has demonstrated the possibility of peaceful,

conflict-free joined production of urban space by the opposing parties, nevertheless their

autonomous co-existence within the framework of the collective protest refers us back to the

practices of earlier protects in the Revolution Square and in Triumfal‟naya Square. This

autonomy worked there to estrange both the site, the monument and the preceding social

practices of other groups. In this case Maykovsky‟s Readings serve as the only attempt at

overcoming this autonomy and connecting the history of the site and of the monument with the

present.

Conclusion

26

Maykovsky‟s Readings have revealed a new way of producing the urban space in

Moscow. Unlike the actions of Moscow‟s radical auctionism that foregrounded the figure of an

artist who addressed himself to the public - the residents of the city, - Mayakovsky‟s Reading are

organized by a political activist and draw all those eager to read their own verse or that of other

authors. This openness to diverse participants as well as references to anti-governmental actions

of the Dissenters March and of Strategy-31, alongside the poetry readings of the 1950s and

1960s and the complex relationship between Russian Futurism and the Socialist Realism in

literature, that probably offers a chance of re-actuliazation for other Soviet-era monuments as

well, achieved through the language of contemporary art on the one hand, and through the

political action of diverse groups in the city on the other.

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Translated by Ksenia Poluektova-Krimer

Article was prepared for the Collection “Moscow: a Global City”. University of Leeds. UK. 2012.

(unpublished)