B

ronze History And Literature

 

July 8 - September 10, 2005






Russian flag



Pushkin
Pushkin (Near Arbat)

There are statues all over Moscow, of generals and composers, poets and princes. We regularly rode the trolleybus past one of Jan's favorite statues, the one of the writer Gogol. He ruled over a small park set between two roadways that carried traffic in opposite directions. But perhaps the most popular subject of Muscovite statues is Pushkin, sometimes accompanied by his wife Goncharova. The one above is located near the Arbat, not far from the site of the apartment he and Goncharova moved into when they married which overlooks Arbat street, now a popular tourist site and pedestrian area.

Pushkin
Lermontov or Pushkin??

We have been unable to definitively identify this statue. To us it looks like Pushkin, but a friendly museum guide told us it was Lermontov. Our guide book doesn't mention the statue and we couldn't get close enough to see if there was a label on it, as it was behind the fence of what looked like a private house in a residential district behind the big commercial thoroughfare Novi Arbat (New Arbat).

Alexander or Nicolas??
Alexander or Nicolas??

When the Church of Christ the Saviour was rebuilt, (under the architectural control of the infamous sculptor Tsereteli) the frustrated royalists of the nation got together to put up a statue to honor the tsar who built the original Church of the Saviour, the one destroyed by Stalin who aimed to erect a statue of Lenin atop a 50-meter column but couldn't ever get it built and so the church having already been demolished, filled in the gigantic foundation hole with a giant public swimming pool. We must admit that on some days we would have liked to find a swimming pool to cool off in, but we also understood the emotions involved in re-erecting the church and honoring Alexander II.

Alexander or Nicolas??
Alexander's Replacement

Yes, Lenin is still a force to be reckoned with in the world of statues. He is to be found in just about every town in Russia still, with his arm stretched out and looking all out of proportion. The statue above is a different matter entirely as it is found in the Moscow Sculpture Park, a.k.a. the home for dead statues.

At the Park when I asked in my very best Russian for two tickets, a very nice cashier who knew only too well that we were foreigners took pity on us having to pay 100 roubles each ($3) and let us in with one ticket. We ought not to have accepted, but really it galls us to pay ten times the Russian rate (in this case it was 10 roubles). We have concluded that the official exchange rate doesn’t come close to reflecting the true purchasing power parity between the rouble and the dollar. The rouble should be worth about a cent and then all the prices would make sense: the park would cost a dollar, a McDonald’s meal would cost $1.50, and so on.




December 31, 2005