"Imperial idols", or How the Bolsheviks fought with monuments and destroyed the traces of tsarist power

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Each era has its own monuments. Being the embodiment of the spirit of the times, its main ideas and aesthetic priorities, they can tell a lot about descendants. However, history knows many examples when the coming generations tried to completely erase from the face of the earth the material symbols of the previous power, and along with them - the memory of their predecessors. This is exactly what the Bolsheviks did after the 1917 revolution - the Soviet government recognized the monuments to tsarism as "ugly idols."

What monuments of "accursed tsarism" got the most and out of turn

According to the plan of the Soviet government, nothing was supposed to remind of a state that has ceased to exist and will never be reborn. This position was approved by law - the decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On Monuments of the Republic", in which the monuments in honor of the Russian monarchs and their associates were declared to have neither historical nor artistic value and subject to dismantling and disposal. One of the first to suffer was a unique monument, the first Moscow equestrian monument - to the hero of the Russian-Turkish war, General Mikhail Skobelev, who went down in history as the "White General". The barbaric event was timed to coincide with the proletarian holiday - May 1. A large-scale composition depicting battle scenes and exploits of Russian soldiers was sent to be melted down without regret.

According to one version, a similar fate befell the monument to the young Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Ivan Susanin, who saved him, in Kostroma, whose fate became a vivid example of life for the tsar. One of the country's main monuments, the memorial complex in the Kremlin dedicated to Alexander II, was also subject to urgent liquidation. The memory of the tsar-liberator, who became a victim of terrorists, was greatly honored in Russia. In many cities there were sculptures of him, and almost all of them were destroyed by the revolutionary government.

How imperial monuments turned into stands and lost value

The campaign against the monuments was clearly vandalism. One got the impression that it was not enough for the proletarians to simply destroy the monuments. In their actions, there was a desire to outrage the monuments, to desecrate them. For example, in Moscow, the monument to the heroes of Plevna was turned into a toilet, and the sculpture of General Skobelev was thrown into a cesspool in the Chernigov province.

The Bolsheviks found a monstrously cynical use for the remains of the aforementioned memorial complex of Alexander II: the voids formed at the base of the monument were turned into burial places for the executed enemies of the revolution. A very widespread act was the use of monuments to crowned persons as tribunes for rallies. Climbing the statues of the former autocrats, trampling them underfoot - what could be more symbolic ?!

There are notes in Bolshevik newspapers about how revolutionary-minded workers addressed the crowd from the knees of the bronze figure of Alexander III at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Similar cases were recorded in Petrograd - with a monument to the same monarch near the Nikolaevsky railway station and to Catherine II on Nevsky Prospekt. Often, the speakers did not confine themselves to fiery speeches and waving banners, but strove to secure the red flag in the hand of the royal person, about which there is also a lot of evidence from the press.

Another step in the devaluation of the sculptural heritage of tsarist Russia is the decision to delete imperial monuments from the category of objects of state importance.

New time - new monuments

As they say, a holy place is never empty. The old obelisks - “kings and their servants” - were replaced by new ones, as required by the decree “On the monuments of the Republic”. This document prescribed the organization of a large-scale competition for the development of projects of monuments, marking the greatness of revolutionary achievements. In the fall of 1918, the first victim of "monumental propaganda" was a small stele in the Alexander Garden, erected to mark the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty. Without further ado, proletarian art workers cut down the two-headed eagle crowning the monument, and instead of the image of George the Victorious and a commemorative inscription, they placed a list of outstanding revolutionaries.

A little later, Maximilian Robespierre was honored to be immortalized in the Land of the Soviets. However, the leader of the French Revolution did not last long in the Alexander Garden: the famous politician was sculpted from concrete and plaster, which could not withstand the first frost. The haste with which the Bolsheviks erected the monuments did not allow the sculptors to concentrate on the task and thoroughly work out the artistic idea of each creation. Therefore, instead of heroic, truly interesting images, banal products often appeared that did not stand up to criticism. In fairness, it should be noted that frankly unsuccessful, primitive monuments were soon dismantled. Among them is a monument to Marx and Engels, which Lenin personally opened in his time.

How the wave of demolition of monuments to "kings and their servants" swept across Russia

A hurricane of struggle against the monumental legacy of the tsarist regime swept across the country. In Kiev, a monument to Alexander II erected with public donations was dismantled and a figure symbolizing the new Soviet man was erected in its place. In Yekaterinburg, the bronze image of this emperor was successively replaced by the so-called Statue of Liberty, a bust of Marx and a sculpture of a man of liberated labor. And in Saratov, the statue of Alexander II was replaced with a plaster bust of Chernyshevsky.

Another symbol of freedom - the proletarian breaking chains on the globe - ended up in Simferopol on the site of the monument to Empress Catherine II. The small Ural town of Kushva was famous for the monument in honor of the rescue of Emperor Alexander III after the attempt on his life on the railroad near Kharkov. After the statue of the sovereign was destroyed, a symbol of the world revolution appeared on the pedestal - a wooden globe on a spire. In Kiev, the wave of anger of the Ukrainian proletariat spread even to the Rurik dynasty: Princess Olga was overthrown from the pedestal, and a monument to Taras Shevchenko was erected in her place, which, however, did not last long because of poor-quality materials.

Later, the monuments began to be erected already Soviet intelligence officer in Poland.