VI Lenin and Palace of Culture Mosaic – Ribniţa – Pridnestrovie

Posted on 23/11/2025 by Michael

VI Lenin in Ribniţa – Pridnestrovie

VI Lenin and Palace of Culture Mosaic – Ribniţa – Pridnestrovie

The statue of VI Lenin in Ribniţa is located in a square that still bears his name (after all Ribniţa is in Pridnestrovie, a part of the territory that doesn’t want to be dominated by European diktats) in front of the Palace of Culture.

Vladimir Ilych is standing, wearing an open overcoat, the right hand side of which has been caught by the wind. (Quite a few statues of VI Lenin have him depicted with his coat being blown by the wind and I sometimes wonder if his early demise might not have been due to standing outside in adverse weather conditions.) He wears his normal flat cap and his hands are clasped behind his back. A quite informal stance as he looks out over the town and in the general direction of the steel works across the valley. As is, unfortunately, normally the case I have no information about the artist or when the statue was inaugurated.

During the Soviet period this square would have been the most important public space in the town. Outside celebrations of, for example, the anniversary of the October Revolution, would have taken place in the area surrounding his statue and any community events of a city wide importance would have taken place in the building behind him.

Palace of Culture mosaic – Ribniţa – Pridnestrovie

The mosaic, although not ‘overtly’ political (that is, with any representation of past or current Soviet leaders) still makes a political statement. On the left hand side of the huge mosaic you will see representations of science in general (with the atomic symbol) and the electrification of the country (one of the initial aims for Socialism established by Vladimir Ilych in the early days of the revolution) represented by the pylon.

Then we have a representation of the family (indicating stability but not really challenging the bourgeois relationships that were posited by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels); then we have industry – the maquette held aloft – and it’s important to remember that to date Ribniţa is the centre of Pridnestrovie’s steel industry; then there’s chemistry with the woman holding a glass Erlenmeyer flask; next is architecture/building/planning with the image of a street plan; then we have something I’m not sure what it represents, this is a male figure with what looks like sparks coming from his hand (any ideas?).

The two different narratives of the mosaic are separated by a large, oval head and shoulders of a female figure with a smiling face – I’m not sure if this is not to represent Moldovan folk heritage.

The right hand side of the mosaic represents various forms of culture, and also indicating the sort of events that would have taken place in the Palace of Culture. There’s a female violinist and standing behind her a male – this is music and he could possibly be a singer; next is a male with an open book in his left hand and his mouth is open as if he is reciting, he’s also gesticulating as his right arm is outstretched above him – so this is theatre; behind the actor a male stands behind an easel, with a paint brush in his rights hand which is gathering paint from the palette held in his left hand – so here we have the plastic arts; the last figure shown is a seated female figure (in classical dress) – I think she might just represent the artistic Muse in general rather than anything specific.

The extreme right of the image includes a huge bunch of grapes to illustrate the importance of the production of wine in the country – something which is obvious if you travel out of the main cities and pass vast areas of vines – and finally a factory belching out smoke. At the time of the production of this mosaic chimneys belching out smoke were considered a sign of progress and industrialisation. Images of factories from Britain, for example, during the hey days of the industrial revolution often showed such images (although often with a reference to Hell) and the Soviet Union was seeking to reach the same level of industrial production. In hindsight, whether such a policy was the best is, perhaps, questionable. However, these smoking chimneys reference steel production in Ribniţa.

Location;

In Lenin Square, at the junction of Biruintei Boulavard and Strada Kirov.

GPS;

47.76599 N

29.00760 E

Soviet Open Air Museum of Petru Costin – near Chișinău – Moldova

Posted on 15/11/2025 by Michael

Soviet Open Air Museum of Petru Costin

Soviet Open Air Museum of Petru Costin – near Chișinău – Moldova

This is the outside companion piece to the Petru Costin Gallery in Ialoveni. It is home to those artefacts (including a small plane and a couple of helicopters) that were either designed to be placed in the open air or are too big to be inside the gallery.

There’s a description of many of the items – so you can know who is actually represented and also at times an indication of where they came from, when and why they were removed. However, there’s no information on how they ended up in a field on the side of a valley in central Moldova.

There’s only one image of JV Stalin and that has been heavily vandalised. This initial attack would have taken place in the early 1960s (I would imagine) but it remained otherwise intact for the next 30 years during the period of Revisionist control of the first worker’s state. Where? It’s not known.

Not surprisingly there are many statues/busts of VI Lenin but amongst the collection there are also one or two surprises. There’s a head and shoulders of both a young and an older Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife. There’s a bust of Yuri Gagarin, the first man into space, who I would have thought would have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union as he represented a Russian as well as a Soviet achievement. Also, not a surprise, is the presence of a number of images of FE Dzerzhinsky (‘Iron Felix’), the first head of the Cheka.

YM Sverdlov, barely lived for two years after the October Revolution as he succumbed to the ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic in 1919 (a matter that rarely gets mentioned in histories of the Revolution but which must have had an impact on both sides in the Civil War/War of Intervention. There are a couple of busts of SM Kirov, the leader of the Bolsheviks in Leningrad who was assassinated in 1934. Military leaders are also represented, including VI Chapayev and MV Frunze, who both played a crucial role in the war to protect the Revolution during the Civil War against the White, reactionary forces.

There’s a couple of busts of Karl Marx but Frederick Engels isn’t represented. There are also a couple of statues of MI Kalinin, the Soviet President for just under 20 years – one of which doesn’t quite look right. The large, headless red torso is almost certainly that of JV Stalin – it has his classic stance. The whole statue must have been immense but there’s no more information about where it might have stood. It’s only speculation (based only on its size) that it might be what remains of the statue that stood at the entrance to the Volga-Don Canal, a little south of Stalingrad, which was replaced by a statue of VI Lenin.

There were also some statues – and pieces of statues – which wouldn’t have been controversial but had just, presumably, become ‘unloved’, or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This statue park is similar to the Park of the Fallen/Muzeon Art Park in Moscow, the Museum of Socialist Art – Sofia and Memento Park close to Budapest.

Location;

2J94+54 Scoreni

That doesn’t look like an address but if you put it into a map search it will get you there.

How to get there;

This is a very unfriendly public transport location. The museum is about 5 km north-west of the town of Suruceni and the museum itself is along a dirt road just under a kilometre from the main road. It goes downhill (steeply) which means it comes up hill even more steeply. Consider the option of talking to Natalia at the Petru Costin Gallery in Ialoveni. It might turn out a bit more expensive but it will get you there much easier.

GPS;

47.01796 N

28.60530 E

Petru Costin Gallery – Ialoveni – Moldova

Posted on 15/11/2025 by Michael

Petru Costin Gallery – Ialoveni

Petru Costin Gallery – Ialoveni – Moldova

This gallery in a small town just on the edge of Chișinău (full official name Galeria colecțiilor Petru Costin a consiliului raional Ialoveni) is a strange place.

Housed in what was a school for special needs children before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 this four story ‘museum’ is certainly unique. Petru Costin was a Romanian Customs Official and hoarder. He collected anything and everything from Moldova during the Socialist period – together with some earlier religious works.

It’s not really curated in the sense you would expect in a ‘normal’ museum which makes visiting some of the rooms overwhelming. There’s little in the way of description of most of the articles and missing dates on some items makes if difficult to recognise any development in the technology, for example, in the electrical equipment rooms.

Although there are items related to the decoration and propaganda produced in the Soviet Union, for example, many hundreds of enamel badges in one of the first floor rooms – but surprisingly no badges of VI Lenin (unless I missed them in the general chaos) – those especially interested in such material have to wait until you are taken to the very last room on the ground floor.

This would have originally have been the school’s assembly hall and is the largest single room in the building. It’s packed with statues, busts, paintings, banners, pendants and general ‘memorabilia’ from the Soviet era. Although there has been some element of organisation of the material there is so much, and so little space, that the curator just seems to have eventually given up.

That’s a shame. We know that all museums have much more material than they have on public display (I read recently an article where the V and A Museum in London is trying to make more of its collection ‘in storage’ available to the general public) but the decision in this gallery is to make everything available on show – even if it means it’s difficult to properly see and appreciate what’s there. I suppose the only solution would be more space – but that would provide its own problems.

Most museums have so much to see that you end up missing some of the most interesting items – not seeing the wood for the trees. And that’s even more the case here.

I didn’t even make a start on counting the images of VI Lenin, both in statuary and in other forms. JV Stalin makes a number of appearances followed, in number, by images of FE Dzerzhinsky, I understand both Lenin and Stalin and I can appreciate the role ‘Iron Felix’ played in the early defence of the Revolution but I have never been able to work out exactly why (amongst some of the other important Bolshevik leaders of the 1920s and 30s) he seemed to be so respected by so many of the Soviet population – even into the Revisionist period.

The slide show below aims to pick out some detail from the chaos – perhaps a second visit might be warranted to discover what I might have missed the first time.

Location;

Strada Stefan cel Mare 4, Ialoveni

Telephone;

373 (0)69294556

GPS;

46.95136 N

28.78376 E

How to get there;

Trolleybus No 36 (destination Ialoveni) heading south-east down Boulevard Stefan cel Mare in Chișinău will take you within a few minutes walk of the gallery. Get off just before the roundabout at the bottom of the very long hill. Be careful if you return to Chișinău on the no. 36. The second half of the return route is completely different from the outward and you end up close to the Triumphal Arch by the back way.

Cost is 10 leu (6 leu for Chișinău and 4 leu for Ialoveni).

The matrushka No. 35, from the Central Bus Station, will also take you there.

Website – in Romanian only;

A companion piece to the internal gallery (and well worth the effort of visiting) is the Petru Costin Open Air Museum (see the separate page on this blog for what is on display there) but this is not easy if you are dependent on public transport. One of the best options is to talk to (the English speaking) Natalia at the Gallery. She can arrange for one of the local volunteers (or a local taxi driver) to take you there, wait whilst you walk around the site and bring you back to Ialoveni. Cost around 400 leu/€20.