Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution of 1905-1907, Moscow

Posted on 01/10/2024 by Michael

Monument to 1905-1907 Revolution

Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution of 1905-1907, Moscow

This monument commemorates the first attempt that the Russian workers had in making a revolution in Russia in the 20th century. Although it failed the lessons learnt from that attempt (together with the lessons learnt from the Paris Commune of 1871) meant that the successful Revolution of October (old style) 1917, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, led by VI Lenin, was possible.

The monument

The story of the monument is basically in three parts.

Monument to 1905-1907 Revolution – 01

On the left there are two figures. A woman is standing and leaning against her legs is a dead or seriously injured male. The woman has both her arms fully extended above her head in the shape of a V (for victory?) and her fists are clenched. Even though the reaction is killing the people she remains defiant and angry, prepared to fight on, even if it means her death. Her face has the look of sadness for the injury/death of her Comrade but also one of determination. The reaction might win now but the future is of the workers.

Monument to 1905-1907 Revolution – 02

On the right there are two workers, a man and a woman, who are taking on one of the Tsarist cavalrymen. They are on the attack even against something as large and powerful as a military horse and its rider. The woman has taken hold of the horses bridle, causing it to rear up on its hind legs. This makes the seating of the soldier unsteady as he falls back and gets lower to the ground. This gives the opportunity for the man to drag the soldier from his saddle and take away his advantage. Once on the ground he will be vulnerable to attack from the rest of the (unseen) crowd. The look of panic on the face of the cavalryman is clear. He is losing this particular battle and it could mean he will also lose his life.

Monument to 1905-1907 Revolution – 02

In the centre is a symbolic grouping of Revolution. Here there are three men, one younger than the other two. The fact that there are three men and no image of a woman is a little bit unusual. I haven’t seen as many Soviet monuments of this sort as I have seen in Albania, but there, in such a circumstance, there is always a female representative to illustrate that this battle for revolution and a change in the life of the working class and peasantry is a fight of both men and women.

Two of the men are standing and one is kneeling. The oldest man in the middle is holding the pole of a huge (red) flag that flutters in the wind behind the group. The red flag is the workers’ flag and as long as that is flying the workers will never be defeated. On his left is a young man, standing with his rifle in his right hand, held high out in front of him – a sign of victory (but here not of 1905-1907 but of the victory to come in 1917). He is in the dress of a Russian peasant at the time – all such monuments stressing the unity of the workers and peasants against Tsarism. The kneeling revolutionary is on the viewers left of the group. He is dressed as an industrial worker and is holding his rifle in his right hand, with its butt resting on the ground. They are all looking ahead, into the future.

The inscription on the podium;

in Russian;

Революции 1905-1907 годов посвящается

in English;

Dedicated to the revolutionary years 1905-1907

Across the road, in Dekabrskaya Park, at the far end, there’s a fine statue of a seated Lenin.

Reading list;

VI Lenin – Pages from his life, Volume 2, the first Russian Revolution 1905-1907

VI Lenin – Lecture on the 1905 Revolution

Date of inauguration;

February 17, 1981, in honour of the 75 anniversary of the Moscow armed uprising in December 1905.

Artists:

OA Ikonnikov and VA Fedorov

Architects;

ME Konstantinov, AM Polovnikov and VM Fursov

Location;

In front of Ulitsa 1905 Goda Metro station, on Line 7, north west of the city centre.

GPS;

55.76362º N

37.56241º E

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow

Posted on 20/08/2024 by Michael

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 01

More on the USSR

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow

The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute (Russian: Институт Маркса — Энгельса — Ленина), established in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx–Engels Institute (Russian: Институт К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса), was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The institute was later attached to the governing Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and served as a research centre and publishing house for officially published works of Marxist thought. From 1956 to 1991, the institute was named the Institute of Marxism–Leninism (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма).

The Marx–Engels Institute gathered unpublished manuscripts by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and other leading Marxist theoreticians as well as collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals related to the socialist and organized labour movements. By 1930, the facility’s holdings included more than 400,000 books and journals and more than 55,000 original and photocopy documents by Marx and Engels alone, making it one of the largest holdings of socialist-related material in the world.

In November 1931 the Marx–Engels Institute was merged with the larger Lenin Institute (established in 1923) to form the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute.

The institute was the coordinating authority for the systematic organization of documents released in the multi-volume editions of the Collected Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and numerous other official publications.

The institute included an academic staff which engaged in research on historical and topical themes. The institute included sections devoted to the history of the First and Second Internationals, the history of Germany, the history of France, the history of Great Britain, the history of the United States, the history of the countries of Southern Europe and the history of international relations. Also included were sections working in philosophy, economics, political science and the history of socialism in Slavic countries.

The main research orientation of the facility was towards history rather than other social sciences. By 1930, of the 109 employed by the Marx–Engels Institute, fully 87 were historians.

During its first decade, the institute published an array of books by the likes of Georgi Plekhanov, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, David Ricardo and Adam Smith. The publication of the anticipated multi-volume works of Marx and Engels was started at this time (1927/28) in the form of two editions: An untranslated, complete edition (the first Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), which was to comprise 42 volumes (12 of which were published until 1935 – then this project was discontinued), and a first Russian edition in 28 volumes (Sochineniya1), the 33 bound books of which were completely published by 1947.

The institute also published two regular academic journals, Arkhiv Karla Marksa i Friderikha Engel’sa (Archive of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) and Letopis’ marksizma (Marxist Chronicle).

The Lenin Institute began as an independent archival project, established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1923 to gather manuscripts with a view to publication of a scholarly edition of Vladimir Lenin’s collected works. This work was accomplished through the publication of a thick periodical called Leninskii sbornik (Lenin Miscellany), some 25 numbers of which were published between 1924 and 1933. The institute eventually became under the jurisdiction of the Central Committee as a department.

The mission of the Lenin Institute was expanded in 1924 by the 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party to include the ‘study and dissemination of Leninism among the broad masses within and outside the party’, namely an enlarged purview which rendered obsolete the previously existing Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the History of the Communist Party. In 1928, Istpart was dissolved and its functions fully absorbed by the Lenin Institute.

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 1931

The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute was subsequently renamed multiple times. In 1952, the facility’s formal attachment to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was formally noted with the expanded moniker Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт Маркса—Энгельса—Ленина при ЦК КПСС). The name of deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was added in 1953, with the institute formally becoming the Marx–Engels–Lenin–Stalin Institute of the CC CPSU.

This remained in place until the onset of de-Stalinization following the Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. At this point, the name changed to Institute of Marxism–Leninism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма при ЦК КПСС). During this period, beginning in the 1950s, the institute was involved in the realization of major projects such as the publication of a second Russian edition of the collected works of Marx and Engels (Sochineniya2 with 39 basic and 11 supplementary volumes) and the comprehensive fifth edition of Lenin’s Collected Works (55 volumes). From the 1970s onwards, it also participated with foreign partners in the publication of the English-language Marx/Engels Collected Works (50 volumes) and the second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe.

The name Institute of Marxism–Leninism remained unaltered for nearly 35 years, when turmoil in the Soviet Union brought about a name change to Institute of the Theory and History of Socialism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт теории и истории социализма ЦК КПСС). The institute formally ceased to exist in November 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union, with the institute’s library and archive transferred to a new entity called the Russian Independent Institute for Social and National Problems.

The Central Party Archive of the institute was placed under the control of the Russian Ministry of Culture and eventually emerged as the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI).

Text above from Wikipedia.

When the building was first opened the main entrance was facing Tverskaya Square, where there is now a statue of VI Lenin. At some time later, I assume when the building was expanded, the main entrance was moved to the new part of the building facing Ulitsa Bol’shaya Dmitrovka. At that time the bas relief images of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin were commissioned to decorate the new façade of the building.

But they are not just simple bas reliefs of the great Marxist theoreticians. As part of the image aspects of their work was also included.

The three images are made of a bronze bas-relief and are on the first floor (UK designation) – above the main door and the glass frontages on either side of the entrance. There’s symmetry here as the space taken by the sculpture is exactly the same size as the space below. Each sector is bounded by a white border which contrasts with the beige of the building itself and which gives the three individuals their own space. From left to right they are;

Karl Marx

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 02

The image of Marx is based on various photographs that were taken in his later years, with long hair and a bushy beard. This is in the centre of the rectangle. In the bottom left hand corner is a small Greek Doric column. On top of the column there are a number of books but only one has a title, and that is Marx’s seminal work ‘Capital’. There appears to be a mask being crushed under the weight of Marx’s image and this seems to be making a reference to one of Marx’s ideas that the work of philosophers is not just to interpret the world (which it had been in the past) – but to change it.

In the bottom right hand corner there’s the image of a blacksmith. He’s wearing the blacksmith’s leather apron, stands behind a large anvil and is holding the the shaft of his hammer – the head of which is resting on the anvil – in his left hand and his right arm is raised in the air from which flutters the workers’ Red Flag.

Above the blacksmith (on the upper right hand side) a chimney rises to the sky, belching out smoke. This represents the industrialisation which Marx said created the proletariat, the wage slaves of capitalism.

Towards the top of the left hand side there is a group of four armed men, marching forward in unison. They look as if they are in a line going up a hill, their weapons pointing towards their adversary. By their hats they look as if they are from different epochs and different countries. This represents that the unified workers, over time and space, can only achieve their liberation through armed struggle – something which Marx started to stress following the defeat of the workers during the Paris Commune of 1871.

Across the top, cutting through the smoke coming from the factory chimney, is a banner with the words (in Cyrillic) ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ – the very last words of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848).

Frederick Engels

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 03

The image of Engels is as can be seen, in Moscow, in the statue outside the main entrance to Kropotkinskaya Metro station.

In the bottom left hand corner we only see the two hands of a worker pulling asunder a chain. This is reference to ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains’, the second to last sentence in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which Engels co-wrote with his comrade Karl Marx. The backdrop to this image appears to be part of a machine and above this image there appears to be a collection of factory chimneys belching out smoke, reinforcing the idea it is industrial workers who will liberate humanity from oppression and exploitation.

The right hand side of the panel is dominated by a collection of images of workers making a revolution, specifically the Paris Commune – as was referenced in the panel of Marx. A lot is happening here in a small space.

First we have the full length image of a young woman, standing tall and upright, the hem of her long dress like a banner as she marches forward, her long hair also flowing behind her. In her right hand she holds a long sword which appears to be attached to a triangular banner with the words (in Latin letters) ‘Vive la Commune’ – ‘Long Live the Commune’. She holds the other end of the banner taut in her left hand. This female image originates much more from the (bourgeois) French Revolution of the 18th century rather than the Workers’ Commune of 1871, but it is the Spirit of Revolution that is being invoked here.

Above the banner we see little more than the heads of two male figures. The first is a member of the Parisian National Guard (we know that by his hat) and he is carrying a long rifle, with bayonet fixed, as he marches forward. Behind him is another man who is looking backwards as he encourages others to join the fight with his outstretched hand motioning them to follow the attacking forces. This is a common trope of Socialist Realist imagery. This is seen in many of the lapidars in Albania, for example, and also in Moscow itself on the monument to Lenin and the October Revolution opposite the Okysbrskaya Metro station.

The final part of this small tableau is a cannon. Only a part of the wheel and the barrel is seen, and the cannon has just been fired as it’s smoke merges with the smoke from the factory chimneys on the other side of the panel.

Why this emphasis on the 1871 Paris Commune in the imagery of the first two panels, those of Marx and Engels? The answer to that question is in what we see in the third panel, that of VI Lenin.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – 04

The images surrounding Lenin’s in this panel revolve around the events of the October Revolution of 1917 – and here is where we get the connection to the Paris Commune. If there was a ‘textbook’ for the Russian Revolution then it was Lenin’s pamphlet ‘The State and Revolution’, first published in August 1917. In preparation for this seminal work on a proletarian revolution Lenin studied all he could about the Paris Commune, its successes and its failures. Whilst in no way detracting from the huge cost the Parisian workers paid in their defeat (an estimated 40,000 were killed in the final week of the revolution) for daring to challenge capitalism’s right to rule it’s true to say that without the Paris Commune there wouldn’t have been the October Revolution – or at least one in Russia that was successful.

So what do we have here? We know we are seeing events from 1917 as that number cuts diagonally across the corner on the top left hand side. At the bottom, below the date, we have three, armed workers, marching forward in step. The first is a sailor (making reference to the role that the navy and especially those sailors from the cruiser Aurora – whose forward gun fired the signal for the start of the assault on the Winter Palace). Beside him is a woman revolutionary, with a rifle slung across her shoulder, expressing the idea that women – as in the Paris Commune – were prepared to take up arms for the cause of the workers. Finally, the third figure is that of a peasant in the uniform of a soldier in the Tsarist Army. His inclusion emphasises that the revolution was one of unified workers and peasants.

Above then, and below the year 1917, are two pamphlets with their subject written in Cyrillic. The top one is the Decree on Peace and the lower the Decree on Land. These were the very first decrees of the new Soviet power – and they were both part of the commitment the Bolsheviks made to the Russian population in the build up to the Revolution. The war (what later became known as the First Word War) had taken a heavy toll on the Russian people and they were sick of fighting for the moribund and corrupt Tsarist autocracy. The war ended as quickly as it took to transmit the decree to the frontlines.

In a predominantly peasant country the issue of land ownership was paramount and this was another promise that the Bolsheviks had made to the people. Taking all land under State control meant that the Party could later develop the system of State and Collective Farms and improve the lot of the peasants but it also created the conditions for the country to industrialise.

Both these decrees came into force the day after the Revolution, that is the 8th November (26th October Old Style), and can be read in ‘First decrees of Soviet Power’.

Above the decrees is an image of the sculpture – of a horse drawn chariot of the angel of Victory, with references to the Roman Empire – on top of the triumphal arch of the General Staff building of the Winter Palace complex. (This sculpture commemorates the defeat of the Napoleonic imperialist invaders of 1812 and is the work of Stepan Pimenov and Vasily Demuth-Malinovsky.) In 1917 the Winter Palace was the location of the Provisional Government and it was this building – amongst others in Petrograd – that was stormed when the signal was sent out from the nearby Cruiser Aurora.

Running across virtually the whole of the top of the panel are the words (in Cyrillic) ‘All power to the Soviets!’ This was another of the principal slogans of the Bolsheviks at the time of the Revolution, taking power from the bourgeoisie and placing it in the hands of organised workers and peasants.

The images on the right hand side move matters into the future. There’s a peasant working the land and a worker wielding a pick – and above them is a number of smoke belching factory chimneys, representing the later collectivisation and industrialisation of the country.

In the bottom right hand corner are three books on the spine of which is the name of Lenin, in Russian, English and French, here demonstrating the universality of Lenin’s ideas and theories.

To date I have no information on the artist or the date these images were created. I would estimate the 1970s (but that’s only a guess) and represent late Socialist Realist as although nominally a Socialist society reversals in the construction of Socialism begun in the mid 1950s continued apace.

Location;

Ulitsa Bol’shaya Dmitrovka, 15, Moscow

GPS;

55.762851º N

37.613168º E

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – Park Pobedy – Lines 3 and 8a

Posted on 17/08/2024 by Michael

Park Pobedy

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Park Pobedy – Lines 3 and 8a

Park Pobedy (Russian: Парк Победы, lit. ’Victory Park’) is a station of the Moscow Metro in the city’s Dorogomilovo District. It is on two lines: the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line and the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line. At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, according to the official figures, it is the deepest metro station in Moscow and one of the deepest in the world.

Construction began in 1986. The initial plans envisaged connections from the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line to the future Mitino–Butovskaya and the Solntsevo–Mytischinskaya Chordal lines. The former was accommodated in the station’s design, with two additional tracks included parallel to those of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line (the latter would have used a third set of track perpendicular to these). However, the 1990s financial crises ended the Chordal projects; the station opened in 2003 as a terminus of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line, and in 2008 the Strogino–Mitino extension of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line was begun from Park Pobedy. The second set of tracks saw their first use on 31 January 2014 as part of the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line’s partial service to Delovoy Tsentr.

This is the only Moscow metro station where all passengers board and alight trains in different locations. A further complication was that only the southern, or inbound, platform had an entrance vestibule, so passengers arriving at the northern, or outbound, platform had to change platforms to leave the station. This, however, changed in March 2017, when the southern platform was connected directly to the entrance by a new escalator tunnel.

At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, Park Pobedy is the deepest station in Moscow and the fifth-deepest in the world by mean depth, after Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongyancun station, Kyiv Metro’s Arsenalna, Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongtudi station and Saint Petersburg Metro’s Admiralteyskaya, and is the third deepest station by maximum depth, 97 metres (318 ft). It also contains the longest escalators in Europe, each one is 126 metres (413 ft) long and has 740 steps. The escalator ride to the surface takes approximately three minutes.

The two platforms, the work of architects Nataliya Shurygina and Nikolay Shumakov, are of identical design but have opposite colour schemes. The pylons of the outbound platform are faced with red marble on the transverse faces and pale grey marble on the longitudinal faces. The inbound platform is the exact reverse. The station is adorned with two large mosaics by Zurab Tsereteli depicting the 1812 French Invasion of Russia (at the end of the inbound platform) and World War II (on the outbound platform).

The station has a unique structural design. Instead of traditional cast iron tunnel lining Park Pobedy lining included steel blocks filled with concrete. It significantly reduced amount of structural metal and consequentially overall cost of construction.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Park Pobedy – 02

Park Pobedy

Date of opening;

6th May 2003

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part

N. Shurygina and N. Shumakov

Park Pobedy was opened on May 6, Day of George the Victorious, patron saint of the Russian host. It is the 165th station of the Moscow Metro – first of the new, already the sixth or seventh, generation of stations. It includes a great number of design, engineering, and technical innovations along with architectural novelty and freshness. It was constructed with modern tunnel machinery.

As a result, an enormous complex of two stations and two underground pavilions was constructed..

The stations are parallel and lie at the same level, 64 m deep. Trains of Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line arrive to station 1 but depart from station 2. The station halls are elegant, refined, and simple. Compact, upper opening pylons are separated by wider passageways. There is a wide cornice, hiding lamps, over the pylons along the whole station. There are additional ceiling square lamps on the lower part of the cornice, which reflect (when switched on) in the smooth surface of the floor. The level of polishing of decorative stones is higher than elsewhere in the Moscow Metro.

The pylons and walls of station 2 are faced with light marble, ranging from white to bluish-grey. The walls of the passageways and plinths are with unique marble breccia, from yellow-orange to red with very good-looking combination of fragments of different shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. The ceiling is covered with the same smoothly polished plates of red and light-grey granite. Station 1 is the mirror image of station 2. White is replaced by yellow-orange and vice versa. The ceilings are chessboards of black gabbro and light-grey marble. The stations are thematic – the second one is

devoted to the Patriotic War of 1812 and the first one is to the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The themes are manifested with great striking panels. The panel of station 2 is in the eastern end, while the panel of station 1 is in the western end. They are the unique works in the Moscow Metro. They are unique in technique (colour enamel on metal) and style. The author of both panels is Z. Tsereteli.

The theme of the western panel is Victory in 1945. It shows the monument of a liberator-soldier

in the Treptov Park on the background of the Kremlin. A triumphant throng is around. Order of Victory is above and the ribbon of Guard is below. Very interesting is the effect inherent only in

the technique of enamel. White colour appears very bright. So, the first thing that one see looking

at the panel is white eyes and teeth in slightly opened mouths. The theme of the eastern panel is Victory in 1812. It shows top officers of the Russian army, which was victorious over Napoleon – M. Kutuzov surrounded by major associates. It is neither the meeting in Fili (no Bagration) nor the meeting after occupation of Paris (no Emperor). It could be the meeting before the Borodino Battle but the generals trample on thrown French standards. It seems the painter has pictured a summoning of the saint army of Christ in the heavens. There are massive benches of marble with large marble balls on the arms located on a small pedestal along the walls.

The stations are connected by bridges through the wall between them. The passageways are also faced with very good looking marble breccia of pastel colours, ranging from cream-coloured to soft pink. The stations are connected with the ground by the longest escalators in Moscow (126 m, 740 steps), which end in the two-level underground hall.

Vestibule of Park Pobedy

This vestibule is an original underground architectural ensemble consisted of three halls. There are

wide doors decorated with a granite panel with metal letters ‘Park Pobedy’ on the side at the corner of the L-type underpass crossing Kutuzovsky Prospect and Ulitsa Barklaya. Behind the doors, there is a wide passageway of white marble, which is cut by the long axis with square columns. The passageway leads to the ticket hall – a rectangular low hall. Behind the turnstiles, a staircase goes down turning twice at right angles and three short escalators end. The staircase leads to the greater escalator hall whose ceiling is supported by columns faced with orange marble breccia. Their cup-shaped metallic caps hide lamps. The vestibule is illuminated with five very large and deep coffers made in the suspension ceiling. The walls are faced with orange marble with an edging of white marble above.

The text above comes from Moscow Metro 1935-2005.

Park Pobedy – 03

The station at Park Pobedy really falls out of my idea of recording the Socialist Realist art on the Moscow (and Leningrad) metro. However, even some of those stations most recently added to the network have interesting designs, even so many years after the end of Socialism in the USSR (which I consider to be the mid-1950s) the tradition of making the public space something that is attractive to the users still persists.

Many of the earlier stations have references to either the Civil War (1918-1921) – following the October Revolution – or the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 and Park Pobedy follows a military theme as it is the station that serves the park that surrounds Moscow’s Museum to the Great Patriotic War.

As is suggested in the Wikipedia write up above this station is not the easiest to navigate for a first timer. I must have been going down the wrong escalators as I couldn’t find the mosaic that depicts events from the Great Patriotic War. There are a few pictures of the mosaic about the war against the Napoleonic imperialists – hopefully images from the other mosaic will be added in the not too distant future.

The images that are united by the orange and black Saint George ribbon (which was used on a par with the Hammer and Sickle in installations commemorating Victory Day (9^th May) in 2024) line the tunnel sides of the entrance from the street at Victory Park (Park Pobedy) itself. Not sure if these are permanent or were installed for the 9^th May Victory Day celebrations.