In Russia it has always been fashionable and prestigious to fight withall kinds of idols. Prince Vladimir, instituting Christianity, drowned a lot of Peruns in the Dnieper, and now his Ukrainian descendants everywhere bring down defenseless Vladimir Ilyich.
In the Russian Federation, suddenly worrieda monument to Gogol. The monument to the times of Soviet power in the former Prechistensky (now Gogol) boulevard in March 2014 was decided to dismantle, and in its place to return the old, the work of N. Andreev, who was erected there from the very beginning, back in 1909.
The same monument to Gogol in Moscow, whichnow are going to return to their place, the progressive public decided to build it back in August 1880. This year the monument to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was opened on Tverskoi Boulevard. The audience burst into tears of delight and emotion, and immediately there were enthusiasts wishing to pay tribute to Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The monument was planned to be opened by the fiftieth anniversary of the death - in 1902, but did not have time. Despite the fact that almost immediately a subscription was announced to raise funds, the case was quiet for a long time.
Accusations of greed and slowness, soundingfrom the lips of some figures (M. Kuraev, in particular), are hardly deserved: the monument to Alexander Sergeyevich was collected more quickly (the well-known figure of the classic appeared to everyone twenty years after the subscription began), but not for the sake of Nikolai Vasilievich.
Famous Russian industrialist Demidovpromised copper "how much is required" and still gave five thousand rubles. There were other benefactors. By 1890, ripe for the creation of an ad hoc committee for the erection of the monument, but he was not particularly in a hurry, until in 1893 the emperor himself ordered him to "accelerate."
It did not work so right away, but the membersvenerable assembly finally held a series of meetings and identified a person to whom it was necessary "to address questions of the construction of the monument." Interestingly, that his name was A. N. Nose. Just a hoax some.
Somehow, with a scratch, held a contest for the bestwork, but none of the sketches presented impressed the commission. It became clear that we must move: 1909 was inexorably approaching - a hundred years since the birth was performed by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The monument, not ripe for the anniversary of death, would be very handy.
It is still unknown what backstage negotiationspreceded the approval of the draft N. Andreev, but voted for him unanimously (according to the conditions voiced by the committee, a single vote against vetoed the adoption of the sketch). Perhaps the decision really was forced: there was almost no time left. So, with grief in half, began construction work, widely covered by the press and causing lively discussion among Muscovites.
Shortly before the opening of the famous critic Sergei Yablonovsky called the monument a symbol of "terrible and nightmarish" and expressed the opinion that "many will not want it." As in the water looked!
The opening of the monument to Gogol in Moscow was planned withbig pomp, although here it was not without the usual (we have to admit) bungling: the specially erected tribunes turned out to be flimsy, they were banned from using sin. Therefore, in the photos from the opening, you can see an impressive crush at the foot of the newly opened monument, and next to empty "visual rows". The beginning did not bode well ...
Emotions caused by the monument, immediately abruptlywere divided. Many decided (Repin, for example) that before them - a significant work of art, but a fairly large audience found the monument to a real spittle into eternity.
The sculpture depicted a man completelywrapped in a raincoat, with his head lowered. Bent, ludicrously fallen to one side, Gogol was sitting in an armchair and was an incarnate world sorrow, and his famous long nose almost touched his knees. The four-edged pedestal was framed by a copper strip - the bas-relief on it depicted the heroes of the famous works of the writer. They did not call criticism. But the very figure of the classic!
The wife of Leo Nikolayevich, who visited the opening ceremonyTolstoy, Sofya Andreevna, found the monument "disgusting" (as in her personal diary and wrote). Quite amusing that her great spouse, the great classic of world literature, liked the monument.
In such a range and there were numerousreviews. Nevertheless, nobody was going to change the sedentary monument to Gogol, and he would have stood at the beginning of Gogol Boulevard, it is quite possible, to this day, if in the seventeenth year of the last century the "young, unfamiliar tribe" did not come to power and decided not to decide the fate of the country (and monuments) in a new way.
Monument to Gogol on Gogol BoulevardHe survived the revolution for thirty-five years and all this time he was attacked, becoming more and more evil day by day. The reason was: according to some sources, the bent figure of the literary classics was acting on the nerves of Joseph Vissarionovich himself, who was compelled to regularly sympathize with the skewed Gogol: the monument was accurately on the way to the dacha in Kuntsevo, where the all-powerful Soviet general secretary was based.
Thousands of sycophants, wishing to spend their belovedleader, did not skimp on "kicks" to the creation of N. Andreev. The famous Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina (author of the famous "Worker and Collective Farm Girl") accused the monument of the discrepancy of the surrounding reality. Say, once there was a reason for Gogol to be sad - from the horrors of tsarism and other arbitrariness, but now what should I mourn, when the country began to live "better and more fun"?
At first to dismantle a sedentary monument to Gogol inMoscow was not planned - it was supposed to just build another one, on the other end of the square. Who struck the table with his fist is not known, but in 1952, on the 100th anniversary of the writer's death, a new monument was opened in Moscow, strikingly different from the previous one.
History with the approval of the project was againsome kind of dark one: the winner of the contest was the sculptor Tomsky, who had been praised by the power (the owner of five Stalin prizes!), who later admitted that the monument to Gogol on Gogol Boulevard of his authorship was frankly bad. Justified the rush: they say, did not have time to do more qualitatively, because it was necessary to meet the deadlines - to the hundredth anniversary of the death of the writer.
After the presentation of the results of the annual work, againsomething like a scandal broke out. Having seen the newly appeared monument to N. Gogol, the public was struck (and shocked). Now the author of the magnificent monument with the monstrous smug inscription "From the Soviet Government" (over which they have been laughing for more than half a century) has hit the other extreme: a cheerful "dance teacher" was replaced by a smiling, short-haired pelerinka in place of the sick, dejected classics. Some considered the "masterpiece" to be a caricature, and folk poetry once again flashed up with tiny epigrams.
Andreev's monument was dismantled in 1951, in order to build a new, standing monument to Gogol on the vacated site (which would embody the victory of art over the dark reality).
At first "not in the topic of sad" copper NicholasVasilyevich even wanted to be executed (sent to the remelting), but the staff of the Moscow Architectural Museum somehow miraculously saved the work of art. In the end, it did not last long. Until 1959, the dismantled monument was kept in the museum's branch located in the former Donskoy monastery: many sculptures disliked by the Soviet system found shelter there: marble figures from the facades of destroyed Moscow churches, for example.
Despite the fact that the idea of destructionmonuments of the Soviet era, many do not like, now over the "cheerful" Nikolai Vasilyevich hung a threat. At the same time, experts argue that the attempt to return the historical monument to its former place is fraught with unforeseen complications: the construction is quite old, it can be damaged during transportation - it is better to leave it as it is. Still, it is impossible to argue with the fact that the two monuments to Gogol - better than none.
