Fighting Moscow's new Stalin monument with Russia's oldest weapon: poetry
Artem Korotayev / TASS Moscow’s “Alley of Rulers” recently got two new installations: busts of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, created by the controversial Georgian-Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. To protest the unveiling, a woman picketed the statue, holding in her hands a poster bearing the words of Anna Akhmatova’s 1962 poem, “To the Defenders of Stalin”: “There are those who shouted: ‘Release / Barabbas for us on this feast,’ / Those who ordered Socrates to drink poison / In the bare, narrow prison. / They are the ones who should pour this drink / Into their own innocently slandering mouths, / Those sweet lovers of torture, / Experts in the manufacture of orphans.” (Translation by Roberta Reeder, New England Review, Vol. 18, No. 1)
