Monument to Taras Shevchenko (Moscow)

The monument was erected in the city center, on the coast of the Moscow River next to the Ukraine Hotel ( Kutuzovsky Prospekt , 2/1). The authors of the monument is a group of sculptors composed of Mikhail Gritsyuk , Yulia Sinkevich and Anatoly Fuzhenko. The monument was inaugurated on June 10, 1964 at the initiative of Nikita Khrushchev . Work on the restoration of the monument began in 1995 with the permission of the Main Directorate for the Protection of Monuments of the City of Moscow: restoration of the inscription on the monument in 1995 and general restoration in 1999 ^[3] .

The monument is a bronze figure of a poet 5.6 m high on a flat (with elevation) granite pedestal. According to one of the authors of the monument, Julius Sinkevich, the main idea of ​​the monument is a “winged poet”. The dynamism of the monument and this inspiration of the figure of Taras Shevchenko is achieved, first of all, due to the original appearance of the poet, namely the clothes - a modern “winged coat” for Taras Shevchenko. The figure seems to be moving and growing in the ground (low pedestal), which should emphasize the poet’s connection with the people ^[4] .

There is a version that in the 1960s, the Ukrainian community in the United States began to raise funds to erect a Shevchenko monument in Washington . Upon learning of this, Khrushchev urgently ordered the announcement of an all-Union contest of monument designs in Moscow. The competition among 35 participating projects was won by a group of sculptors led by Sinkevich. The monument was unveiled on June 10, 1964, eight days before the opening of the monument in Washington. This event made the sculptors famous throughout the USSR ^[5] . A group of Ukrainian intellectuals spoke out against the poet’s image, including Maxim Rylsky and Pavel Tychina : according to them, there was no information and sources that would confirm the version of Taras Grigoryevich’s greatcoat. However, this image of the poet was approved by the Moscow authorities ^[4] .

In Mirgorod ( Poltava region ) there is an exact copy of the Moscow monument , which was created as a thesis by a group of students of the Mirgorod Ceramic College and opened in 1971 .