By Sergei Borisov
An inscription praising Joseph Stalin at a refurbished metro
station in Moscow has sparked a new controversy over the
Soviet political and architectural heritage.
Passengers at the Kurskaya metro station, unveiled after
the repairs, have been surprised recently to see it decorated
with a powerful symbol of the past. A restored inscription
contains a line from an old version of the Soviet national
anthem.
The line reads: “Stalin brought us up to be loyal to people,
inspired us to labour and feats.” Unveiling the decoration
coincided with the death of Sergei Mikhalkov, the author
of the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s national anthems. In
1977, Mikhalkov had to renew the anthem, removing the name
of Stalin from it.
The reappearance of the line about the former USSR leader
at the station is “the restoration of historic truth,” Pavel
Sukharnikov, head of the metro’s press service, said. According
to metro head Dmitry Gaev, “the task was to reconstruct
the station in its original form.” The vestibule now looks
like it was at its opening 59 years ago.
Communists have welcomed the move. “It is positive that
the authorities and metro have returned what was there from
the beginning,” Vladimir Lakeyev, head of the faction of
the Communist Party in the Moscow City Duma, told Gazeta
daily.
Lakeyev noted that this year will see the 130th anniversary
of Stalin’s birth. The paper, in its turn, writes that the
statue of Stalin that was situated in the vestibule at the
time of its opening has now been restored.
Nikolay Kharitonov, a deputy of the State Duma from the
Communist Party, asked not to condemn the restorers who
returned the name of Stalin to the station. “The more so,
because Stalin did a lot for building this very metro,”
he told to the Regions.ru website. Kharitonov urged people
not to “break anything” and to “popularize real history”
now that many want to “rewrite it.”
The idea of restoring the inscription in the metro also
has its supporters among preservationists of monuments.
Marina Khrustalyova, Chairperson of the Moscow Architecture
Preservation Society (MAPS) and coordinator of Arkhnadzor
preservation society, believes that “decor could not be
considered from ideological points of view.”
The stations of the Moscow metro are the buildings of the
federal cultural heritage, she told Gazeta. “No changes
to their exteriors are permissible,” Khrustaleva said.
Meanwhile, many representatives of Russia’s intelligentsia
have expressed their protest against the move of the metro’s
management. Poet Yury Kublanovsky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta
daily that the buildings of metro stations do not need “such
scrupulous restoring.”
These buildings could be called architectural monuments,
Kublanovsky said. “But they are simultaneously monuments
of the bloody Stalin’s era,” he added. In this case it is
“rather a historical and cultural coquetry than a serious
restoration,” the poet noted.
One should be very cautious using Stalin’s name, Kublanovsky
believes. Recently there have been attempts “to name Stalin
a successful manager, or a man who saved our country during
[WWII], because our society needs a leader,” he said. “Stalin
is not right for this role, too much human blood and tears
are on his hands,” Kublanovsky stressed.
Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal YABLOKO
party called on the management of the Moscow metro
to remove the inscription that “insults the memory of millions
of victims of political repressions.”
The step could not be justified by “considerations of the
restoration of the original look of the station,” the media
quote Mitrokhin as saying. He added that the decoration
was removed at the station in 1950s, which was connected
with mass release of political prisoners and the 20th Congress
of the Communist Party that had denounced Stalin’s personality
cult.
Mitrokhin also called on the Russian president to introduce
to the State Duma a project of a declaration “condemning
the crimes of Stalinism and treating Stalin’s repressions
as genocide of a multinational Soviet people.”
Co-chairmen of the Right Cause party Georgy Bovt, Leonid
Gozman and Boris Titov have sent a letter to the Moscow
mayor, condemning the appearance of the controversial inscription
at Kurskaya. Many Muscovites are protesting against this
step, the leadership of the party said, adding that they
would fight for removing the symbol. This line “disgraces
our city and insults the memory of millions of victims of
the dictator,” they said.
The media reported that collecting of signatures of those
protesting against the inscription has begun in the city.
At the same time, Vechernaya Moskva daily noted that Stalin’s
quotation had been also engraved in the marble above an
escalator at Baumanskaya metro station. It was rubbed off,
but an attentive look would be able to see Stalin’s name,
the daily added.
Stalin is a common character in Russian films, and nobody
protests against this, the daily said. “Some 90% of passengers
who run under the dome of Kurskaya station, restored in
all its grandeur, will hardly raise their heads to read
‘the controversial’ inscription,” the paper added.
Sculptor Aleksandr Rukavishnikov echoed this statement
“People have begun to abstract from those times, and many
do not even know the difference between Stalin, Lenin and
Tutankhamen,” he told Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.
There are similar monuments to Benito Mussolini and his
epoch in Italy, sculptor Aleksandr Rukavishnikov told. In
Spain, monuments to Francisco Franco have been partly destroyed
and partly preserved, he added.
“I think that it would be the most appropriate to preserve
everything and not to touch and break anything, because
it is called vandalism,” Rukavishnikov said. He believes
that works of art are “one thing, and Stalin’s personality
is another.”
Russian bloggers were among the first who reacted to the
news about “a new line” in the metro – the line from the
anthem. According to estimates of online812.ru website,
the absolute majority of Russian bloggers supported the
idea. However the most active were those who rather write
comments on someone else’s blogs than keep their own ones.
Some users in the Russian blogosphere were even angered
at the fact that the sculpture of Stalin had not been restored
in the vestibule of Kurskaya. One user protested against
the restoration of only “Stalin’s part” of the anthem’s
line. Another part had been dedicated to Vladimir Lenin.
However, this statement has not provoked a strong reaction
from the public.
See also:
The
original at
Overcoming
Stalin’s Legacy
