Monument to Gogol (Nikitsky Boulevard)

The idea of ​​erecting a monument to Gogol in Moscow arose during the celebrations dedicated to the opening of the monument to Pushkin in 1880 : in August, at the initiative of the Society of Russian Literature Lovers , a subscription was opened for fundraising. Ivan Aksakov, who knew N.V. Gogol closely, recalled this ^[8] :

One of the first donors was the industrialist and philanthropist P. P. Demidov , who donated 5,000 rubles and promised to supply copper as much as would be needed to make the monument ^[9] .

By the end of 1890, capital reached 52 thousand rubles, and the Society of Russian Literature Lovers decided to form a Committee for the construction of a monument to N.V. Gogol in Moscow. At the first meeting of the Committee, held on April 6, 1896, the question of choosing a place for the monument in Moscow was considered.

Arbat, Lubyanka and Theater squares, Strastnaya and Rozhdestvensky boulevards were considered; preference was given to Arbat Square - where it adjoined Prechistensky Boulevard .

By this time, an amount of about 70 thousand rubles had accumulated, and the Committee considered it sufficient to begin the construction of the monument. At the same meeting, a competition program for the best monument design was developed and announced. The conditions were put forward as follows:

The monument is supposed to be made of bronze. Gogol should be depicted in a sitting position, in a suit of his time. The pedestal should correspond to the situation of the place (Arbat Square, at the end of Prechistensky Boulevard) where the monument will stand. The front side, he will be facing the Znamenka. The monument will be surrounded by a square. <...> The shape and size of the monument are provided to the drafter of the project. Allegorical figures are not allowed, as well as bas-reliefs. Materials: granite, porphyry, bronze

Of the 46 projects presented on February 14, 1902 at the next meeting of the Committee, four projects were selected ( R. R. Bach , S. M. Volnukhina , P. P. Zabello and V. V. Sherwood ), but none of them was recommended for the construction of the monument.

At the very first meeting of the Committee, chaired by the new mayor N. I. Guchkov, on February 13, 1906 , at the proposal of I. S. Ostroukhov , the design was entrusted to the sculptor N. A. Andreev ; Ostroukhov knew Andreev’s successful decision of the image of Gogol - the bust of the writer was put at Mirgorod station with funds from the Kiev-Voronezh Railway. The architect F. O. Shekhtel (who designed the pedestal of the monument and the surrounding design ^[10] ), the artist V. A. Serov and the artist of the Maly Theater A. Lensky were invited to participate as experts. The committee set the condition: if at least one of the committee members expresses objections to the presented model, the order to the sculptor will be canceled. Already on April 28, 1906, the project was put on display by members of the Committee in the garden of the Ostroukhovsky house in Trubnikovsky Lane . The committee unanimously approved the submitted draft ^{[9] [8]} , even Serov “terribly distrusting Andreev” answered Ostroukhov’s question: “Very, very well, did not expect it!” For Nikolai Andreevich Andreev, this order was the debut in a monumental sculpture in which he subsequently worked hard and fruitfully ^[10] .

The laying of the monument took place on May 27, 1907. The grand opening was on April 26, 1909 with an extremely large crowd of people and was timed to coincide with the centenary of the writer's birthday. The Gogolev anniversary in 1909 in Moscow was celebrated on a large scale and took on the scale of a national holiday: only a program of events directly related to the opening of the monument took three days ^[11] .

In its original place, Prechistensky Boulevard, the monument stood for 42 years. In 1951, it was transferred to the territory of the Donskoy Monastery, and in 1959 the monument was erected in the courtyard of the former estate of Count A.P. Tolstoy on Nikitsky Boulevard. In this house, N. V. Gogol spent the last four years of his life ^[10] .

Nikolai Andreev portrayed Gogol during his mental crisis, having lost faith in his work, devastated to despair. The viewer appears before the writer, deeply immersed in mournful thoughts. The sculptor emphasized his depressed state with a bent posture, a lowered shoulder line, a tilt of the head, folds of a cloak, which almost completely hides the seemingly frozen body ^[2] .

The sculpture was solved in an impressionistic manner, which was characteristic of the work of Nikolai Andreev of those years. The sculptor is more passionate about the play of light and shadow, exquisite lines; reveals picturesque rather than monumental forms. Plastic forms are filed in slightly dissected volumes, in almost a single array, which only enhances the emotional impression ^{[2] [12]} .

The pedestal of the monument is framed by bronze bas-reliefs of excellent work, which feature heroes from Gogol's most famous works: The Inspector General , The Overcoat , Taras Bulba , Dead Souls and others. The bas-reliefs, filled with the vitality of Gogol's characters, in their emotional mood form a discord with the general impression of the monument, go against the embodied image of the writer himself ^{[10] [2]} .

This monument identified innovative finds that are interesting in artistic terms, in terms of the technique of execution and study of plastic forms. But the most radical phenomenon for the monumental art of that time was the very idea of ​​the “grieving” Gogol. This idea caused a lot of controversy immediately after the opening of the monument.

The monument made a strong impression on the cultural community of Moscow and Russia as a whole. No one expected this interpretation of the image of the great writer: instead of the formal image of the “national genius”, the public appeared Gogol sick and broken. N. Andreev refused one of the most stable stereotypes of creating monuments: a national hero must be portrayed in all the splendor of his talent and in the halo of majesty. ^{[10] [2] [3] [11]}

Numerous contemporaries recollected, reflecting the reaction to the monument. One of them says ^[11] :

The artist Mikhail Nesterov wrote about the monument: ^[10]

Another artist, Ilya Repin , fully supported the idea of ​​the monument ^[9] :

The writer Tatyana Aksakova-Sivers subsequently recalled ^[10] :

The philosopher Vasily Rozanov published an article “Why the monument to Gogol failed”, in which he wrote ^[13] :

The critic Sergei Yablonovsky predicted the reaction of public opinion (and to some extent the further development of events) in his article published in the newspaper " New Russian Word " a month before the opening of the monument ^[11] :

And in numerous other publications in the press of that time, opinions were also very controversial, with a predominance of negative assessments. It was noted that "Gogol of Mr. Andreev is a subjective person and speaks little to the heart of a Russian person ... This is not Gogol, whom we know and love ..."; “Most of all they are unhappy with the fact that it is not significant. So, a figurine of some kind! In any case, not a monument. Thirsty Gogol here ”; “Much seems one-sided, much is debatable, but in any case one cannot throw a reproach on banality and dead academism . Is this not enough? ” ^[11] ; “In the whole pose, in the movement with which he wrapped his fragile figure in an overcoat, there was something sorrowful, some kind of great tiredness of the heart with which life was so severely treated” ^[4] , etc. The Architect was on the side of the sculptor: “Andreev’s work is not devoid of an idea and a peculiar charm ... One cannot but admit that this thing is not banal, not stereotyped, completely in the spirit of our time, in the spirit of young Russian sculpture.” ^[10]

Konstantin Korovin drew attention to the intimate nature of N. Andreev's "great work of art." It is significant that already then there were proposals to move the monument. For example, V. D. Polenov did not consider his placement on the boulevard to be successful and proposed “to put this beautiful, delicate, creepy work in the courtyard of the Tretyakov Gallery ” ^[11] .

The monument aroused sympathy in the liberal milieu and displeasure in conservative and monarchistically minded circles of society. In the monument at that time, in the electrified political atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary years, a certain challenge was easily read, reproaching the autocracy for "the tragedy of the ruined genius." They said that supposedly Countess P. S. Uvarova , who headed the Moscow Archaeological Society , was ready to pay 12 thousand to someone who would save Moscow from the monument ^{[10] [3] [11]} . Petersburg newspaper on May 16, 1909 reported: “There are rumors that a group of artists and famous collectors who remained dissatisfied with the monument to N.V. Gogol in Moscow intend to open a subscription and, when a sufficient number of Protestants gather, initiate a petition to replace this monument with another " ^[14] .

The monument, which caused so much controversy in pre-revolutionary Russia, after the October Revolution for some time seemed quite appropriate to the new authorities due to the politicized context in the image of Gogol as a “victim of tsarism” (in 1924 it was included in the “List of buildings, monuments of historical and artistic significance in Moscow and the Moscow province ” ^[11] ). However, this did not last long. The tragedy monument on one of the central squares of socialist Moscow was already criticized in the mid -1930s : the newspaper Pravda wrote that the monument distorts "the image of the great writer, treating him as a pessimist and mystic." ^[ten]

Vera Mukhina considered the author’s approach to solving a creative problem to be erroneous and formulated a new concept: ^[10]

It was decided to replace the monument to Gogol; The first competition for a new sculpture, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the SNK of the USSR announced in 1936 . However, before World War II, the venture was not carried out ^{[10] [11]} .

In 1951, the monument was removed from Gogolevsky Boulevard, making way for a new monument (in the volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia published the year before, the work of N. A. Andreev was defined as “deeply erroneous” ^[15] ). Until 1959, it was kept in the branch of the Museum of Architecture on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery . In those years, the Donskoy Monastery became a kind of refuge for many monuments, objectionable to the communist government. Fragments of the destroyed Sukharev Tower and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (marble statues adorning the walls of the temple), statues and bas-reliefs from the dismantled Triumphal Gate , fragments of the Iversky Chapel , and decorative decoration of some demolished Moscow churches were stored here. In 1959 , in the year of the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birth, in the wake of the Khrushchev thaw, the monument was “returned from exile”, installed near the house where Gogol lived for the last four years and where he died. In the 1960s, a project appeared to create N.V. Gogol 's house-museum in the former estate of A.P. Tolstoy (the idea was partially realized in 1974 in the form of several memorial rooms). ^[eleven]

Back in the mid -1960s , the press began to discuss the issue of returning the Andreevsky monument to its original place. The idea spread throughout the years of perestroika ; She was supported by many well-known political figures of that time, including Archpriest Alexander Men : ^[16] .

In 1993, this idea was closer to implementation than ever. The organizing committee for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Arbat, celebrated that year (which included Yuri Luzhkov , Mikhail Ulyanov , Bulat Okudzhava and others), took the initiative to transfer the sculpture of Andreev to a historical site as part of the celebrations. The proposal was supported by Academician D. S. Likhachev , President of the Russian Cultural Foundation ; it was approved by the Moscow Soviet and submitted for discussion by the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation . But the dispersal of the Supreme Council in October 1993 prevented the implementation of the plan. ^[sixteen]

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of N.V. Gogol, celebrated in 2009 , the proposal to return the monument to its original place sounded with renewed vigor. A group of Russian cultural figures led by Nobel laureate academician Vitaly Ginzburg addressed this initiative to the Speaker of the State Duma B.V. Gryzlov ; the appeal, which was signed by “50 famous people” (including Valentin Rodionov , director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Mikhail Shvydkoy , representative of the President of the Russian Federation for international cultural cooperation, Yuri Mann , scientist and literary critic, ^[17] artist, Ilya Glazunov , film director, Eldar Ryazanov , film director, and Valentin Gaft , Inna Churikov , Basil Lanoviy , Leonid Kuravlev , Sergei Bezrukov , Moscow theater managers Mark Zakharov and Yuri Solomin , writers Andrei Bitov , Vladimir Voinovich , Zhvanetski ), has received wide coverage in the MI. ^[5] Meanwhile, restoration experts and architects expressed doubts about the appropriateness of the next move. Restorer Savva Yamshchikov made a strong argument against this venture: the dramatic changes that occurred at the site of the initial installation of the Andreev monument (the architectural environment took on a clearly dissonant look with his style), the extreme cost of transport, the obvious danger of loss or damage to both monuments. The All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture also objected to this initiative. Opponents of the transfer also drew attention to the fact that the current location of the monument successfully connects the biographical context of the place and the general mood of the Andreev monument. Minister of Culture Alexander Avdeev also opposed the transfer of the monument. ^{[18] [19] [20]}

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