Bad story

As a improvement of the Mandelstam square almost ended in its destruction

Where Ellina shone
Beauty,
I gathered from black holes
Shame ...
O. Mandelstam

In this story, the chronology of events is important.

On Thursday, at 14.29, Lucy Malkis, the founder and creative director of the Arkhippple Society, placed the following alarming post on Facebook: “At the moment, Osip Mandelstam, the architect Alexander Brodsky, was being destroyed by the Square. They beat one of the most ingenious memorial boards in Moscow - "I want the thinking body to turn into the street, into the country." <...> When this vandalism will stop, is this improvement, in the absence of authors responsible for this action?! The project is in a public field. He has an eminent honored author - architect Alexander Brodsky. Why not ask him how he sees this reconstruction? Another rude renovation for Zabelin under the personal guidance of the prefect, which, according to the foreman, arrives at the object 2-3 times a week and personally shows a finger which trees need to be cut down. The snaps of these trees are now rise here - after all, landscape design. <...> The police officer of the nearest stronghold of the work were suspended until the circumstances are clarified for at least a day. He was not satisfied with the oral clarifications of the DKN ( Department of Cultural Heritage. - Ed. ), The essence of which boils down to the fact that “everything is fine”, and he requested additional documentation. They tried to turn the board with me with a crowbar, but it was possible to convince the workers not to do this. At the words “grave and shrine” they took off their specialists and put them in an excavator so that the board did not inadvertently break. The foreman threw branches into the bucket. But the board did not succumb and so far hangs on the "honest word."

Toward the evening, they also recognized the post in the Mandelstam society and immediately relayed it to those individual officials and the media, who are connected with Mandelstam, is not indifferent or should not be not indifferent, for example, to the Minister of Culture of Moscow A. Kibovsky.

The city defenders did not inactive. Thanks to them on Friday, the mayor of Moscow left S. Shargunov’s deputy request with a request to take measures to preserve the square with the monument to the poet and attract Alexander Brodsky to supervision of work.

At 17.56 on Friday, a message appeared on the DKN website: “A commemorative sign with the words of O. Mandelstam near the house 10 in Starosadsky Lane will be returned to the place after repairing the retaining walls. <...> It will be dismantled only for the duration of the work, and at the end of the work - returned to the place. "

Thus, in a day with a little, the scandalous situation, which contained a considerable conflict potential, managed to significantly lower it, scrolling at a single civilian SOS signal to the response of the instance directly responsible! Environmental speed, but what prevented the DKN from September 30 to hang out information signs about the work on the improvement and the fate of the board as part of the memorial complex near the construction site?

Other questions remain, and with them scandalous potential. Of these, the main thing: how can such work be done without coordination and advice with the author, Alexander Brodsky?! Author's supervision with such improvement methods. Here is a list of only gross violations: 1. The historical brick fence is damaged, and what remains is plastered by cement, which is unacceptable, because it leads to the destruction of the old brick. 2. Destroyed, according to the available information, the white -stone drain of the 19th century, which harmonized with the plums of the walls opposite the Ivanovo Monastery. 3. The workers “uproot” the memorial plaque from the poem first with the help of a crowbar, and then a perforator and without any supervision. 4. Near the fountain, trees were cut down in front of the monument on a tiny platform.

This is not the first experience of violent improvement at the site of the monument to Mandelstam. More recently, in 2015, the initial extrontation was also replaced as suddenly and silently: elegant and considerable tiles, specially selected by the authors of the monument (and besides architect A. Brodsky, this is still sculptors E. Munz and D. Shakhovskaya, who died this year), was removed and replaced by mass and brand.

The explosive mixture of barbarism and unprofessionalism at the object, which almost in a day checks the prefect of Cao V. Goverovsky.

All this makes us return to the problem of perpetuating memory of Mandelstam in Moscow. This year is anniversary. The Jubilee Organizing Committee, under the leadership of M. Seslavinsky, succeeded, and, perhaps, the only question with which there was no progress is the question of perpetuating the poet’s memory in Moscow. Unless, of course, not to consider the “Last Address” initiated by the Mandelstam society, on December 26, 2015, established with a large combination of the people in Nashchokinsky Lane, at the end of the house, adjacent to where the poet was taken away in 1934 to the Lubyanka.

The issue of perpetuating forms was ardently discussed, and in the end they stopped to ask for the appropriation of the name of Mandelstam Squver, which adjoined the monument. In a letter of Seslavinsky to the mayor of January 21, 2016, this was formulated as follows: "The square in which the monument to the poet is located." And already on February 17, the answer came from the city hall: “... the place where the monument is located is a well-maintained site (about 140 sq. M), does not have the status of the square and is not an element of the road network. It is not possible to appropriate the name of this territory. ”

In this response (and partly in the formulation of the request) a clear misunderstanding: the organizing committee did not mean a tiny platform at the monument, but that small green massif that comes to it. Once, mothers with children walked in it, and led the entrance to it from the side of the alley between him and the “Mandelstam” house in Starosadsky. But at some point this passage was closed. Now it is completely empty, but the monument is always people. Unfortunately, not only fans of the great poet, but also professional poor, resting here from the works of the righteous at the entrance to the Ivanovo Monastery. They are always tipsy, they can tell a little about Mandelstam, but often the tongue fails them.

The revealed misunderstanding makes us return to the question of the Mandelstam Square near the monument (it is interesting that this expression itself is spontaneously in the course!). The entrance from the side of the alley must be restored, and at the entrance to establish a memorial sign telling about the poet and about this place.

Pavel Nerler
Leonid Vidgof -
Especially for "new"