Maxim Gorky in Chișinău – Moldova

There are a lot of advantages of walking around post-Socialist cities looking for statues and other monuments to VI Lenin – and other revolutionary, Bolshevik leaders. One is that you end up in parts of cities you would never think to visit if not on the search for an elusive statue. The other is that you are very likely to come across another monument/bas relief/statue of which you had no previous knowledge.

That was the case in one of the walkabouts in Chișinău.

Maxim Gorky – Chișinău – 02

Just looking to make sure I wouldn’t be run over by some careless driver I looked into what turned out to be student accommodation of the agricultural academy. There, directly opposite the entrance, was a statue of the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky – erected in 1977.

It is not in the best of conditions and its surrounding have a lot to be desired but he was there nonetheless. Perhaps not cared for but not desecrated either. Indicating to me that there was some sort of respect to the person as a writer – in a country (that is, all the post Socialist countries) where literacy (and education in general) was considered something to be treasured.

Maxim Gorky – Chișinău – 03

The privatisation of education (especially at University level) might have challenged some of those precepts by now but the power of the word and the book (although now, perhaps digital) has not gone away. In Tirana, for example, when the rest of the society was falling apart there was still an annual book fair and the country was publishing books, in the Albanian language, in numbers relative to population levels, which major English speaking countries could only envy.

Hence more than 30 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union a statue of the great Soviet writer still stands in a housing complex on the edge of Chișinău city centre.

Maxim Gorky – Chișinău – 04

But this is not a unique piece of art. Some of the more expensive (granite or marble) statues of the top leadership might have been individually made but many statues (including some of those of Comrades Lenin and Stalin) would have been massed produced.

So it is with the writer Maxim Gorky. The statue in Chișinău is exactly the same as the one in Family Park in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

For anyone interested in Soviet Literature, including some of the works of Maxim Gorky, visit Culture, science, literature and art in the USSR.

Location;

Strada Constantin Tănase 7

GPS;

47.02846 N

28.83934 E

More on Moldova – on the Post-Socialist Countries – Eastern Europe and Asia page

VI Lenin, Karl Marx and Georgi Dimitrov – Chișinău, Moldova

The new location of the Lenin statue is much more pleasant than its original location in the centre of town (in front of the Government building, I understand), having to endure the noise and pollution from the traffic. Now he stands in the park beside quite a large lake, used for boating, to the west of the city centre. However, in his new location Vladimir Iliych isn’t alone. On his right hand side is a large bust of Georgi Dimitrov (the Bulgarian Communist leader, defiant defendant against the Nazis over the accusation of being involved in the Reichstag fire of February 27th 1933 and General Secretary of the Communist International) and on his left Karl Marx (the founder, with Frederick Engels, of the revolutionary theory of the working class).

In translation this location is described as an ‘honour board’ or ‘hall of fame’ neither of which seem appropriate but I have been unable to come up with an alternative that sounds correct in English.

I have no idea where the the busts of Dimitrov and Marx came from but the whole group has been treated with respect and not having been dumped here as some afterthought. A formal, marble back drop, together with honorific laurel scrolls, had been created for the new location demonstrating that consideration and expense had been involved in the relocation.

Although the plinth on which VI Lenin stands bears his name there’s no indication of who his two companions are. Why that’s the case remains a mystery to me. I also don’t understand why the lettering is in Cyrillic and not also in Romanian.

Apart from a slight mark on Vladimir Ilyich’s groin, there’s no damage, as far as I can see, to any of the three statues. And the area is generally clean and shows signs of regular maintenance.

If you visit Comrades Lenin, Marx and Dimitrov be sure to have a look at the bas reliefs on either side of the main entrance to the building beside the ensemble. This is now an events venue – but which must have had a more official, governmental purpose in the past.