Maybe it's a typo?
Posted on 11/09/2005 10:31:27 AM PST by REactor
His most famous statue remains in the purgatory of Soviet monuments, but a less conspicuous sculpture of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky has returned to its original home more than a decade after it was hastily removed amid fears of popular discontent.
Moscow's police force has restored a bust of the once-feared "Iron Felix" in the courtyard of its headquarters at Petrovka 38, where the bust had been removed by police officers on Aug. 22, 1991, due to fears that the angry mob that had brought down Dzerzhinsky's 16-ton statue on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad would attempt a repeat performance.
City police chief Vladimir Pronin approved the request of a group of retired police officers to return the bust during a meeting with them Friday, former city police chief Arkady Murashov said.
"Apparently, Pronin decided to give them a gift for Police Day," Murashov said by telephone, referring to the annual Nov. 10 holiday.
City police spokeswoman Olga Chugunova confirmed that the Dzerzhinsky bust had been returned to the courtyard but declined to comment further. She said photographers were not being allowed to take pictures.
Liberal politicians expressed worries that the return of the bust was a sign of a creeping return to the Soviet system.
"The fact that the bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky was returned to its old location is proof that representatives of the current powers that be ... are trying to return to the old totalitarian system," said Nikita Belykh, head of the Union of Right Forces party, Interfax reported.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent State Duma deputy, urged human rights and pro-democracy organizations to appeal to Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to remove the bust, saying Dzerzhinsky represented the Soviet secret police, concentration camps and "bloody atrocities," Interfax reported.
"We cannot and must not allow everything that this [bust] represents to return to our lives," he said.
Pronin on Tuesday praised the artistic merits of the bust by sculptor Anatoly Bichukov, noting that it had "repeatedly been entered in different art competitions."
"I greet this initiative positively, inasmuch that the opinion of veterans must be respected," Pronin said, Interfax reported.
The statue of Dzerzhinsky in front of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad was one of the more notorious icons of the Soviet past. It was toppled from its pedestal near the former headquarters of the KGB by protesters after the failed coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991 and has found a home alongside other Soviet-era monuments outside the Central House of Artists.
A long-simmering drive to resurrect the statue was shot down in January 2003 by the Moscow City Duma's monuments committee despite support from Mayor Yury Luzhkov for the move, which was initiated by Communist Party members in Irkutsk.
Murashov said police officers quickly removed the bust at Petrovka 38 after its more famous counterpart was brought down.
"They were scared that protesters would storm the building," said Murashov, who headed the city police force in 1991-92 and is a member of the Union of Right Forces.
He was not sure where it had been stored all these years, but said that it had been "probably in a warehouse somewhere."
Murashov said he would probably not have approved the restoration of the bust were he still the city's police chief because "Dzerzhinsky is not the type of person who should be revered."
"But if a group of veterans approached me, maybe I would consider it."
Petrovka is the name of a street in Moscow [Petrovka 38 is the address of city police headquarters], Lubyanka is the name of the square in the same city housing KGB/FSB headquarters. They are in different parts of Moscow city [Petrovka street is about 1 mile NW from Lubyanka square]. Thus your addition to the original article title is incorrect: speaking figuratively, Dzerzhinsky has never left; speaking literally, his statue is not [yet] returning to Lubyanka.
Maybe it's a typo?
==In another 5 years or so the statue will disappear. Lenin will disappear sometime in the not too distant future too.==
Yes, I think the same. Dzerzhinsky and Lenin are from the same team of old crap.
An interesting side bar. One of the more under reported aspects of Putin's KGB service was the nature of his operation while stationed in Dresden. He was afiliated with a Stasi controlled state firm called Robotron. They were, at the time, among the main East Bloc makers of mainframes and even a few PCs. The other notable firm was called Elbrus (located in Russia). Putin was apparently fascinated with wireless technology and ran ops to have operatives go and pick the brains of Western computer and telco industry people attending conferences in Europe. Doing this, it appears he was able to steal IP from the likes of IBM, AT&T, Nortel, the old DSC, Telllabs, DEC, and even newer companies (newer, at the time) such as Compaq, Dell, Sun, Cisco and 3COM. I wonder what happened with all that IP? And I wonder how it might have a bearing on the wave of "joint ventures" (most of which proved to be financial busts) between Western hi tech firms and "former" Soviet state run companies, during the 1990s.
LOL!!
Any chance of getting a translation for the "flapper" photo
Interesting. What does "IP" mean? I know it as Internet Protocol, but it seems like you are using it differently.
Russian spying on the US & Britain is back up to Cold War levels. Russian arms sales are huge, and I'm sure the bulk of it is stolen technology. They are master thieves.
The inscription below the upper picture says: "Be sharp-eyed and vigilant".
The inscription below the lower picture is a poetry written in old Russian style (probably by Russian emigrant). In the poetry Dzerzhinsky says that he is a bloodthirsty psychopat ready to kill everybody in the name of Bolshevik revolution.
Thankyou and the text is appropriate to the cartoon.
I wonder why the fashionable western ladies?
Oh, come on. Do you think that women's fashion 1920's in Russia's big cities was any different from that in the West? The cartoon is evidently from the period of NEP. This may be some fashionable lady from Moscow or ST.Petersburg. I guess that the author of this cartoon imagined that she might have been forced to kill her lover or husband to save her life, or something equally horrible. Have you read Orwell's 1984?
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you
and you sold me
The cartoon is a scene from Hell, and Felix is a Satan.
Ping.
Bump to Tailgunner Joe, thanks.
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