He's a monument

The author is the editor of the social sciences department of the magazine "Around the World".

Once the poet Abay Kunanbayev managed to stand on a par with the poet Alexander Pushkin. The townspeople suddenly discovered him and began to walk ideologically around Moscow. This is not so easy to do: there are too many monuments in Moscow, so we can assume that there are none at all. In every square stands some poet or writer, in every square the head of a pilot or doctor is hidden. Erudites compete in knowledge of biographical facts or even just names.

The fate of Abai - not a humanist poet, but a monument - is quite comical. Several years ago it was placed on Chistye Prudy, not far from the Kazakh embassy, ​​because they could not refuse a gift from the republic. Local residents were indignant and wrote a letter to Putin, but Abai still sat down - modestly, in the bushes. And now Abai readings are taking place near the bronze humanist. His name was able to become key to the city events of the last month precisely because Muscovites six months ago had absolutely nothing to say about Kunanbayev. It appeared here by accident, is not associated with any history, and although it looks like an anachronism, it is neutral. And “humanist poet,” if you don’t think about it, simply sounds like “a good person.” When citizens with their walks move, say, to Okudzhava, the protest sounds not only worse, but completely different. Behind Okudzhava there are texts and meanings familiar to Muscovites, so the Okudzhava readings would have to start not from a blank slate, but from some “images in creativity” or “the genesis of poetics.”

Moscow is a special zone. There is a special commission here that accepts or does not accept applications from ordinary citizens or institutions for the installation of monuments. If you look at what applications were accepted by the commission and what monuments were ordered over the past 15 years, it will immediately become clear what kind of city we live in. Dozens of sculptures of various historical and cultural figures have been approved, but not a single monument to ideas. And most importantly, there are no objects of modern art, or even just ordinary, “unprincipled” urban sculpture, which shapes the landscape and influences indirectly, by its very form.

The maximum deviation from the animal seriousness that the city authorities decide to take are bronze, human-sized figures of actors in images from popular Soviet cinema taken from photographs. That’s why there are so many Nikulins and Sherlock Holmeses in Moscow, and if you want, you can also find Leonov with partaks peeking out from under his alcoholic T-shirt - he’s in the image of the Associate Professor from “Gentlemen of Fortune.” But, of course, much more often various writers and doctors stand, sit, or put their heads on pedestals.

If it is possible to find any consistency in decisions about the construction of monuments, it would be the principle of “understandability”: from the sculpture it should be immediately clear who is depicted and what he is doing. It seems this is the same principle that once gave rise to icon painting - it was supposed to illustrate the Holy Scriptures for the illiterate and entertain them with chilling stories.

It’s somehow inconvenient to remind you that in European cities everything is different, that there is urban sculpture there, but there are almost no new monuments to figures - they have long flown into the format of a “memorable place”. It seems obvious that we have different visual cultures from Europe - while the European experienced the ups and downs of realism, futurism or abstractionism, the Russian learned to spell visual texts. And I must admit, I never fully mastered this art.

A monument commensurate with a person, in the sense of sculpture, is not a domestic tradition at all, and it appeared in Russia only a couple of centuries ago, and before that they erected churches and roadside crosses. Because neither historical events nor time itself played a special role in that picture of the world. The count went on forever. The idea to erect statues came to the mind of Peter the Great. By analogy with the Roman equestrian statues of emperors - and every empire after Rome considered it its duty to borrow Roman artistic habits. In the 19th century, they learned to erect monuments to poets and philosophers, public and no longer entirely imperial, but commensurate with man. But then there were so few of them that everyone was noticeable. Like Pushkin, for example. Then the October Revolution happened and the “Plan of Monumental Propaganda” appeared - the concept of the centralized demolition of royal monuments and the installation of revolutionary monuments, which were supposed to cover the entire country with a single network. Then World War II happened, and not a single village was left without an unknown soldier. Finally, the Soviet Union collapsed and then this began.

Bronze Abai is only a small part of the Moscow that we have systematically acquired over the past decade and a half. In addition to Okudzhava and Brodsky, Emperor Alexander II, Sholokhov, Rostropovich, Vysotsky, Magomayev and Charles de Gaulle were also installed here. This is no longer the Soviet matrix, into which Brodsky and Rostropovich would hardly fit. But it is not anti-Soviet either, in which there is no place for Sholokhov and Magomayev. This is an omnivorous, all-consuming, "unsatisfied gastrointestinal" city, which, for inexplicable reasons, still needs at least some monuments.

Although there were many socialist monuments, they were invented specifically in order to impute and mobilize, therefore they were erected strictly according to the order, were distinguished by a monumental, heroic style and did not raise questions - unless there were questions about the system itself. It was clear which hero was socialist and which was not, how to portray them and who should stand in which squares. From the Soviet system we inherited the still unreflected idea that there must be monuments. But their ideological content no longer leaked into post-Soviet times. So we got a set of conditionally cultural post-Soviet people who have heard about Sholokhov and sing about Okudzhava on occasion, but are not used to seeing connections between phenomena. It was for him that the “Girl with an Oar” was recently restored in Gorky Park. As if it were possible to build a Soviet amusement park in a city that itself does not understand what time it lives in.

Pressure from above, from the authorities and commissions approving more and more new monuments, is organically supplemented by popular ideas about the magical functions of idols. As soon as another Nikulin appears in the city, he instantly becomes the object of ritual actions, as can be judged by his most prominent details. As you know, details need to be rubbed for good luck (for money, a successful marriage, an A on an exam). “St. Sophia, help Julia draw up documents for the sale of ½ of the house and sell it as quickly as possible in order to pay off all debts,” this inscription, among thousands of others, decorates the Sophia tower of the Novodevichy Convent, where I sometimes walk with my son.

Of course, this interactivity of bronze figurines from Soviet cinema, wedding locks on bridges and other “places of power” in parks does not at all lead to the normal, adult interactivity of the urban environment. It is still forbidden to sit on the lawns - all of Moscow is dotted with freshly painted fences and prohibitory signs. There is no street art in this city because it denies the main fetish of Russian urban planning - the so-called “order”, which is incompatible with normal city life. Until recently, there was an orange bench in the park near the Sakharov Center, and then housing and communal services workers came and repainted it gray - for the sake of order. But since the townspeople finally noticed the city, it means that it has already changed. Even if you haven’t noticed it yourself yet.