| Making monuments is rarely simple, as New Yorkers
debating the right
memorial for Sept. 11 can attest. But for controversial trends
in the
commemoration business, it's hard to top modern Moscow. Making
a
post-Soviet break with the past has meant scrapping some of communism's
many trappings, including the goose-stepping honor guard at Lenin's
tomb,
the plethora of Soviet place names, and, most famously, a huge
bronze
statue of the KGB's founding father, Felix Dzerzhinsky. But the
landscape
remains littered with mementos of state-sanctioned mass murder
-- put there
as an exercise in self-exaltation by the former Soviet rulers,
who ordained
the murdering.
All the more disturbing, then, that Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov
has decided
to commemorate the past by rehabilitating one of its nastiest
icons. He is
leading a campaign to bring back the toppled statue of Dzerzhinsky.
This is
a notion as twisted as the unlikely vision of New York's mayor
ordering up
a statue of Osama bin Laden, or Berliners erecting a monument
to Joseph
Goebbels.
The towering multi-ton statue of "Iron Felix" last made
world news when
anti-Soviet demonstrators brought in giant cranes to knock it
down, in
August 1991, just after the failed coup attempt that heralded
the collapse
later that year of the Soviet Union. The statue was hauled away
from its
pedestal in front of the former KGB headquarters, the infamous
Lubyanka
prison, and dumped with sundry other despised communist relics
in a Moscow
park.
At the time, most Russians rejoiced. They knew what Dzerzhinsky
stood for.
A member of Lenin's inner circle, Dzerzhinsky helped lead the
1917
Bolshevik revolution, and set up the communist secret police,
the Cheka,
which later became the KGB, responsible for the deaths of millions
of
Soviet citizens. Dzerzhinsky spawned the Soviet gulag. Before
he dropped
dead in 1926, he backed Stalin as Lenin's successor, ensuring
a reign of
terror that endured for decades.
Ditching Dzerzhinsky's statue left a big blank in busy Lubyanka
Square,
just up the street from the Kremlin. That vacancy was a fitting
memorial,
at least until reborn Russia could define a new national identity.
But Mr.
Luzhkov now seems to be saying the old identity was quite good
enough for
government work. Having opposed a Communist Party proposal four
years ago
to resurrect the statue, Mr. Luzhkov last month began praising
this bronze
hunk of hell as "an excellent monument," once "the
highlight of Lubyanka
Square."
Outraged Russian liberals have been protesting the prospect of
the statue's
return. Lawmaker Yuri Rybakov, for example, denounced the idea,
labeling
Dzerzhinsky "one of the most horrible butchers in history,"
according to
the Associated Press. Some suggested erecting, instead, a statue
of the
last czar, Nicholas II, murdered by the Bolsheviks. Mr. Luzhkov
has
conceded that Dzerzhinsky's tenure had its "excesses,"
but says Felix's
return would be a reminder of Russia's strengths, not "a
return to the
past."
In Mr. Luzhkov's favor, one might argue that just down the street
from the
Dzerzhinsky statue's once and maybe future haunts, another token
of Soviet
terror has recently been slated by City Hall for demolition --
this one
being the hulking old Hotel Moskva. This massive, graceless structure,
with
its huge colonnade and 2,000 rooms, broods over a vast city block
right
next to the Kremlin. It was built at Stalin's behest, during his
heyday of
horror in the 1930s, a behemoth meant to impress the world with
the
productive capacity of the Soviet Union. The Moskva, in its glory
days,
hosted such Soviet celebrities as cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and
was home for
years to the British traitor Guy Burgess. These days, the Moskva
is best
known to the wider world as the building depicted on the label
of
Stolichnaya vodka.
But in Moscow, apart from being notable for its grotesque grandiosity,
uncomfortable quarters and handy location right next to the Kremlin,
the
Moskva is best known for its asymmetrical facade. One weighty
wing is
elaborately adorned; the other, plain. This mismatch comes with
a story,
perhaps apocryphal, that sums up neatly the terror of Stalin's
rule. The
tale goes that when the architects sketched their preliminary
designs for
Stalin's approval, they included two options in the same drawing,
with
separate renderings on each side. Stalin approved the plan without
saying
which style he preferred. Too terrified to ask questions, the
architects
went ahead and included both.
Today, the aging Moskva defies the kind of renovation that has
spruced up
many of the city's old buildings. City officials announced this
past summer
that it will be torn down and replaced with a better-built, more
efficient
complex. Why bother? In a future that would have Dzerzhinsky back
on a
pedestal right up the road, the old Hotel Moskva, Stalin story
and all, may
yet fit right in.
See also:
Yabloko and the
Grim Symbols of the Soviet Era
|
