Wall of mourning
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The Wall of Mourning ( Russian Стена скорби ) is a memorial in Moscow that commemorates the victims of the Soviet system .
It consists of monumental bronze figures, is located at the intersection of Sakharov Prospect and Gartenring , was designed by the Russian sculptor Georgi Franguljan ( Russian Георгий Франгулян , born 1945) and was made public on October 30, 2017 by President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kyrill I. to hand over.
genesis
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October 30th has been the day of remembrance in Russia for the victims of political violence , especially those of the Stalinist terror and the camp system, since 1991 . 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution . True, a number of monuments previously existed in various cities of Russia. But the Wall of Mourning was commissioned by the Russian President and functions as the first official memorial site with transnational significance, i.e. for the entire area of the former USSR . The cost of the monument (the equivalent of 4.4 million euros) was paid partly from taxpayers' money and partly from crowdfunding . The design by Georgi Franguljan won a competition with 336 submissions.
The erection of the memorial was supported by the human rights organization Memorial and the Solzhenitsyn Foundation , among others .
Natalya Solzhenitsyna, widow of the author of the Gulag archipelago , was present at the opening of the monument . In his address, President Putin said: "There is no justification for these crimes."
layout
The wall is thirty meters long and around six meters high. It has gaps so that visitors can step in and feel the weight of the story. The monumental bronze figures, arranged in several rows one above the other, have no faces - so that as many victims as possible can feel represented in the symbolized representation. "Mouth, nose, eyes, everything personal is missing."
“The sculpture represents around 500 figures - they are not concrete, actual figures, but abstract, symbolic ones. You just create this feeling; that is, the plastic acts like a kind of corrosion. Therein lies all the tragedy of what has happened for many, many years. "
The work of art is entitled "Never again".
Reactions
Russian civil society reacted in two ways to the monumental memorial and the state's politics of remembrance. On the one hand, monuments and museums on the theme of Stalinism are welcomed. On the other hand, activists fear that the form of commemoration could be monopolized and quasi “nationalized”. In the past, many local initiatives that wanted to build memorials had to deal with bureaucratic obstacles.
A group of forty former political prisoners criticized the erection of the monument as “hypocrisy” and deliberate historicization at a time when political repression in Russia was increasing. The letter was signed, among others, by Vladimir Bukowski and Alexander Podrabinek , two dissidents of the Soviet era.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jutta Sommerbauer: Putin opens monumental "Wall of Mourning" in Moscow , Die Presse (Vienna), October 29, 2017
- ↑ a b Die Welt (Berlin): Putin inaugurates "Wall of Mourning" for victims of political repression , October 30, 2017
- ↑ Thielko Grieß : "Wall of Mourning" - memorial inaugurated in Moscow ( memento of the original from November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , ARD : Conclusion, October 30, 2017
- ↑ a b Quoted from Deutschlandfunk : Remembrance with contradictions , October 30, 2017
- ^ The Urban Imagination: Wall of Grief, Promise for the Future , accessed October 30, 2017
