Victims of Political Repressions, Monuments,

Categories / Architecture/Sculpture, Monuments
MONUMENTS TO THE VICTIMS OF POLITICAL REPRESSIONS, the foundation stone of the monument To the Victims of Political Repressions in Petrograd -Leningrad was laid in 1990 on Revolyutsii Square that was given its historical name, Troitskaya Square, in 1991. The location of the stone was determined by its proximity to the Museum of the October Revolution (the mansion of Kschessinska), a witness of the events of 1917, and the House of Tsarist Political Prisoners, where veterans of the revolutionary movement lived. The location was determined by the idea that the repressions were the result of Stalin's personality cult and reprisals against honest Bolsheviks-Leninists. The monument To the Victims of Political Repressions, that was mounted in 1995 on Robespierre Embankment, opposite the Kresty Prison, interprets repressions as an integral feature of totalitarian regimes, which is brought out by quotations on the pedestal: poems by N.S. Gumilev, A.A. Akhmatova, D.L. Andreev, N.A. Zabolotsky and I.A. Brodsky, texts by A.I. Solzhenitsyn, D.S. Likhachev, Y. Galanskov, V. Bukovsky and the facsimile of R. Wallenberg. The monument represents the sculptures of sphinxes, created in 1994 by M.M. Shemyakin. Their faces are cut in half - part living, part dead (the latter looks towards Kresty Prison). The sphinxes are placed on the pedestals, with Prison's Window composition between them (architect V.B.Bukhaev).

Reference: Пирютко Ю. М. Между Ленинградом и Петербургом: Памятники на исходе столетия (1986-1999) // Невский архив: Ист.-краевед. сб. СПб., 1999. [Вып.] 4. С. 464-479.

Y. M. Piryutko. Akhmatova Anna Andreevna
Andreev Daniil Leonidovich
Brodsky Iosif Alexandrovich
Bukhaev Vyacheslav Borisovich
Bukovsky Vladimir Konstantinovich
Galanskov Yury Timofeevich
Gumilev Nikolay Stepanovich
Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich
Shemyakin Mikhail Mikhailovich
Solzhenitsyn Aleхander Isaevich
Stalin (real name Dzhugashvili) Iosif Vissarionovich
Wallenberg Raul
Zabolotsky Nikolay Alexeevich
Troitskaya Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Пирютко Ю. М. Между Ленинградом и Петербургом: Памятники на исходе столетия (1986-1999) // Невский архив: Ист.-краевед. сб. СПб., 1999 Kschessinska Mansion
House of Tsarist Political Prisoners
Kresty Prison.
Sphinxes
1990
1995