Monument to Yuri Dolgoruky

By the decision of the Soviet leadership, the 800th anniversary of Moscow in the fall of 1947 was planned to be celebrated on a special scale. It was the first post-war big anniversary, which was also considered as a "dress rehearsal" for the celebrations on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution .

The year 1147 , traditionally considered the year the city was founded, is actually the year of the first annalistic mention of Moscow; by the middle of the 20th century, historians already knew well that a village on the site of Moscow existed at least 200 years before the reign of Yuri Dolgoruky, and the prince could not “establish” it. The question remains unclear whether the fortress ( ancient settlement ) was built in this village under Prince Yuri, or if it existed earlier. However, the celebration of the anniversary was held in accordance with the date that has become traditional. The figure of Yuri Dolgoruky was given special attention.

By personal order of I.V. Stalin , an expedition to Kiev was even equipped in 1946, led by archaeologist and anthropologist M.M. Gerasimov, in order to track down the remains of Yuri Dolgoruky. According to the idea of ​​Stalin, during the anniversary celebrations, a solemn reburial of the prince's ashes was to take place. However, the expedition was unsuccessful; when studying the existing and still the "official" place of burial of the prince, it turned out that it was false.

In the same 1946, in September, a competition was held for the best design of the monument. The winner was the project of S. M. Orlov. For him in the same year, the sculptor was awarded the Stalin Prize . According to Alexander Vaskin , Stalin personally chose Orlov’s candidacy among other applicants, whom American ambassador Averell Harriman highly praised at the Kremlin reception ^[1] .

The ceremony of laying the monument took place on September 6, 1947, during the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Moscow. However, the city did not soon see the monument. Disagreements arose constantly between the co-authors: Sergey Orlov, who had an inactive character, was hard to convince that the artistic techniques acceptable in small plastic art were not always suitable for monumental art. Disputes were not only between the co-authors: Orlov also clashed with the authorities. People who knew him well later said that the sculptor was categorically against the text of the dedication on the monument: “To the Founder of Moscow from the Soviet Government”. Oddly enough, he managed to defend his point of view; the Soviet government is not mentioned at the monument ^[2] . Inadequate funding also affected the speed of work: the Moscow anniversary was marked by the simultaneous launch of several grandiose projects, in particular, the laying of “ Stalin's skyscrapers ”.

Another legend talks about Stalin's approval of the final version of the monument. The leader, having carefully examined the model, said only: “Why do you, Comrade Orlov, Dolgoruky sit on a mare? The stallion will emphasize the masculinity of the founder of Moscow. ” The replica was unexpected, the authors did not find what to answer, and the project was urgently amended ^{[3] [4]} . This legend received a kind of continuation in the time of Khrushchev.

The grand opening of the monument took place on June 6, 1954 . It was manufactured at the Mytishchi plant. People's artist E.F. Belashova, sculptor and bronze foundry worker Gabriel Savinsky, and managed the city budget of 5.5 million rubles.

The images of the prince were not preserved, therefore, the authors of the sculpture created a collective image of the Russian hero on a war horse, dressed in military armor . The horseman, stopping the horse and standing in stirrups, with an imperious gesture, as it were, points to a place for a new fortress. All the elements of military vestments are executed in detail: a shishak with a burgundy on his head, canoes on a torso. Equally drawn are the elements of horse harness . The round shield , fixed on the left hand of the prince, is decorated with the ancient heraldic sign of Moscow - George the Victorious (Prince Yuri - the name of St. George).

The pedestal of the monument is decorated on top with ornamental carvings on the motifs of reliefs of the famous monument of ancient Russian architecture - St. George Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky . Images of a centaur , a bird of Syrin , a basilisk , a bird of the Phoenix , griffins , stylized images of a lion and a deer are used. It is noteworthy that, along with folklore images of Slavic mythology , ancient motifs are widely used in the relief, perceived by ancient masters through Byzantine art . Thus, the authors of the monument illustrated on what rich soil the culture of the cradle of Moscow, Vladimir-Suzdal Russia, flourished ^[5] .

The trends of Soviet art of the late 1940s - early 1950s were clearly manifested in the sculptural monument: a tendency to superficial lifelikeness, excessive attention to minor details, and a craving for embellishment. This approach often clouded the original artistic idea, contradicting the logic of constructing a form ^[6] (see also Stalin's Empire Style ).

The monument to Yuri Dolgoruky immediately provoked a mixed reaction from both the public and the authorities.

One of the legends says that at the moment when the canvas cover was asleep, someone from the crowd shouted: “Well, what it looks like!”. According to another version, they shouted diametrically opposite: "Doesn't look like it!" The first replica is attributed to the writer Zinovy ​​Paperny ; the second - to songwriter Sigismund Katsu ^[7] . Be that as it may, a stylistic discrepancy is indicated in this episode: the monument-symbol of the semi-legendary personality was solved in detail, portrait, with many details. The claim to historical authenticity, reinforced by the pathetic gesture of the bronze prince, became a reason for joke.

However, even before the unveiling of the monument to the “founder of Moscow”, Sovetskaya Square was on the lips of Muscovites, earning a reputation as an “unlucky place”. The fact is that here in 1912 - 1918 there was a multi-figured monument to General Skobelev , the hero of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 .

In accordance with the Leninist plan of monumental propaganda, it was destroyed as a monument to the “servant of tsarism”, and in its place in the fall of 1918 a 26-meter trihedral obelisk appeared in honor of the Soviet constitution . A slender monument in June 1919 was supplemented by the Statue of Liberty by Nikolai Andreev , for which Stanislavsky’s niece Vera Alekseeva posed ^[4] (according to another version, the Moscow Art Theater Evgenia Khovanskaya, famous for her beauty ^[8], became the prototype). The sculptor, working on the statue, was inspired by the dynamic forms of the ancient sculpture of Nika of Samothrace . Muscovites loved the monument and even entered Moscow folklore; for example, in a joke of those years:

The monument was not destined to stand for a long time. By the end of the 1930s , it needed restoration, as it was hastily made of short-lived materials of poor quality: the obelisk was made of brick and plastered “granite”, and the statue was cast from concrete. But it didn’t come to restoration: shortly before the Great Patriotic War, on April 22, 1941 , the monument was destroyed under the pretext of clearing the square. The head of the Statue of Liberty is now kept in the Tretyakov Gallery , getting there in a completely random manner. The poet Anatoly Mariengof subsequently ironically noted:

Another legend says that N. S. Khrushchev greatly disliked the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky. Once, driving along Gorky Street ( Tverskaya was then called) in a bad mood, he drew attention to the fact that the genitalia of the stallion were sculpted by rather large and too naturalistic ones. Having boiled up, Khrushchev ordered to immediately fix the disgrace. The next day, the bronze horse near Yuri Dolgoruky was oskopili. Muscovites immediately responded with a joke: “under the tsars, Skobelev galloped on a stallion, and under Soviet rule Dolgoruky on a gelding ” ^[9] . The monument displeased the old Bolsheviks and the cosmopolitan intelligentsia.

After the monument was unveiled, letters from the most active communists and old Bolsheviks began to arrive in the Moscow Soviet with a demand to remove the “ideologically alien” monument to the “representative of the exploiting classes”. In some of them, special emphasis was placed on the fact that the monument to the prince stands on Sovetskaya Square. Letters went in a mass stream; there were even responses from foreign communists. In 1959, the famous English Communist Andrew Rothstein ( en: Andrew Rothstein ), who had lived in Moscow for a long time, wrote to the head of Glavmosstroy V. F. Promyslov :

This was indeed the first monument in Soviet Moscow to a man who had nothing to do with the communist ideology or the revolutionary movement. Ideological critics rightly pointed to a deviation from the Leninist program of monumental propaganda .

In 1962, a resolution was issued by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the reconstruction of the Freedom Monument on Soviet Square by November 7, 1964”. The monument to Yuri Dolgoruky was planned to be transferred to the square near the Novodevichy Convent . However, in October 1964, N. S. Khrushchev lost all his posts. The new government elite was not up to the monument in those days, and subsequently the Soviet leadership preferred not to recall the initiative of Nikita Sergeevich.

In the " years of stagnation ", the bronze Yuri Dolgoruky Muscovites were still perceived as a foreign element, which is close except perhaps to visitors. The joke of those years is known:

The situation began to change in the process of perestroika , when, on the wave of democratization, Moscow City Day became a regular holiday, and finally broke under Yuri Luzhkov . All official events related to the opening of the City Day were held against the backdrop of the monument to the “founder of Moscow”; the image of the monument was widely circulated on holiday posters. Moscow ostrologists noted the mayor’s love for his namesake, making a joke: “One Yuri is a long- handed , and the other is a long- term urgent ” ^[9] .

• In the “ Gulag Archipelago ” A. I. Solzhenitsyn linked the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky and the Kengirsky rebellion of prisoners , during the suppression of which about 700 prisoners died:

• Following the traces of the searches of M. M. Gerasimov in the 1980s, another expedition to Kiev took place, led by Viktor Kharlamov. In 1989, the expedition finally tracked down the burial of the “founder of Moscow”. A number of examinations confirmed the hypothesis that archaeologists are dealing precisely with the remains of Yuri Dolgoruky (although doubts were later expressed about the correctness of Kharlamov’s conclusions). According to researchers, the prince was distinguished by a short physique, was fat, had disproportionately long arms and feet: his nickname, which was customarily interpreted allegorically, probably made literal sense. He also suffered from osteochondrosis - therefore, riding had to cause him severe pain. The Moscow sculpture monument does not correspond at all to the portrait created by scientists ^{[13] [14]} .

• The unfulfilled project of Vera Mukhina suggested a fundamentally different solution to the image of Yuri Dolgoruky. A single figure was planned without a hint of militancy: the “founder of Moscow” presented himself in lush old Russian princely clothes, trimmed with gold embroidery, dressed in a caftan , in morocco boots. The monument was supposed to be completely covered with multi-colored enamels , which would give the monument a special elegance and festivity. The project interestingly solved the pedestal in the form of a capital . The dedication was stylized under the Old Russian language: "In this place in the year 1147, the city of Moscow was laid down by Yuri Dolgoruky." This was one of the most unusual designs of the artist. Mukhin realized the project of the monument in a revised form as a porcelain figurine with underglaze painting. ^[fifteen]

• In the depths of Tverskaya Square there is another sculptural monument - Lenin (see Monuments to Lenin in Moscow ). It is located behind the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky, near the building of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism. The granite leader of the work of S. D. Merkurov appeared on the square in 1940 .