A Vacant Place Never Stays Empty

The city’s master plan must determine the location where a monument is to be erected.

(Reflections and a historical excursus on some of the monuments of the city of Chișinău.)

Chișinău received city status in 1818; before that, it was classified as a township.

At that time, it had 10 squares. They usually arose at the intersections of streets and roads at the entrances to the city. They were used mainly for trade. The largest squares in the city were considered to be: “Old Square” (the most ancient, situated up the hillside from the crossing over the Bîc River and from Mazarache Hill-today G. Vieru Boulevard); “Red Rows” (a square with a merchants’ courtyard on the present-day territory of the Central Market); “Cattle-Driving” Square (later Ciuflea Square); “Hay” Square (the area of the Republican Stadium); “German” Square (today the Dinamo Stadium); “Railway Station” Square; and others.

“Cathedral” Square (also called the “Parade Ground”) was taking shape as Chișinău’s principal square. The central core of the city was developed over different years. On its opposite sides rose the buildings of the Cathedral with its bell tower and the Metropolitan residence. It was here, in 1840, that the capital’s first monument appeared-the “Triumphal Arch,” erected as a symbol of Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire.

The second monument in the city of Chișinău is the bronze bust of the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (sculptor Alexander Mikhailovich Opekushin). The monument was erected in 1885 in the “Public” Park, which over the course of its existence was renamed Alexandrovsky, Pushkin, and Ștefan cel Mare. The City Garden, as the park was then called, with its cast-iron lacework fencing, was created according to a design by architect Alexander Iosifovich Bernardazzi. It is unclear why the commission responsible for renaming streets and various places in the capital did not restore its original name, but instead gave this nineteenth-century monument of landscape art the name of Ștefan cel Mare.

The monument to A. S. Pushkin deserves a separate discussion; it was built with donations from the townspeople and is thus the property of their legal successors, that is, the capital’s present-day residents, which is why no authority has the right to dispose of such monuments at its own discretion. In 1953, the monument to Alexander Sergeyevich was moved to the center of the park, on the same axis as the Alley of Classics of Moldavian Literature, which opened in the park in 1957. On both sides of the central walkway of this sculptural complex, 12 bronze busts of writers and socio-political figures are mounted on pedestals of polished red granite. This alley is carefully calibrated in terms of the placement, dimensions, and pedestals of the busts, which were created by the finest sculptors of our republic. The alley became a favorite place of recreation for residents and visitors to the capital, but its “continuation” of sculptural portraits installed later evokes only regret: the “heads” differ in scale, dimensions, and the skill of their creators. This section of the Alley of Classics resembles a municipal necropolis rather than a place of public recreation.

The third was the monument to Emperor Alexander II. The sculptor was the same A. M. Opekushin. It was erected in 1886 and stood until 1918 at the entrance to the park, where the Alley of Classics begins today. Few people remember that a monument to J. Stalin once stood on this site (until 1956), having been moved from the entrance square of the Agricultural Institute, today the Academy of Arts, on A. Mateevici Street.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the formation of the Moldavian SSR, a monument to V. I. Lenin was erected in 1949 (sculptor S. Merkurov; architects A. Shchusev and D. Turchaninov). A granite platform was built around the base of the monument, serving as a government reviewing stand during ceremonial events. The erection of this monument defined the republic’s principal square.

In 1947, two years before his death, our fellow countryman Alexey Shchusev developed a plan for the reconstruction of postwar Chișinău. The architect’s innovative idea consisted in abandoning the rectangular layout of Chișinău’s central streets. He proposed laying out three “rays”: toward Youth Avenue (now G. Vieru Boulevard), Sculeni, and Muncești. All three routes would converge at the Bîc River, which after reconstruction would become a full-flowing river with a granite embankment. The same Triumphal Arch was to become the compositional center and axis of the city. From Cathedral Park to the Bîc River, Shchusev drove an avenue through the city, which after the war was called the “Shchusev ray.” Shchusev’s achievement was that he established an urban-planning axis and created the city’s central square (until then, there had simply been a street there). Alexey Viktorovich intended to place a colonnade with military equipment from the recent war on both sides of the arch. Later, L. Grigorashchenko arranged granite slabs in a semicircle on this site, marking milestones in the development of the Moldavian Republic.

On this principal square there is a place that “never stays empty.” In terms of the number of monuments erected and dismantled, this small patch holds every record. In chronological order, it looks like this: from 1914 to 1918, a monument to Russian Emperor Alexander I stood there; from 1918 to 1939, one to King Ferdinand I of Romania. In 1940, the Soviet authorities temporarily erected a plywood image of the leader of the world proletariat, V. Ulyanov. From 1941 to 1944, the Romanian authorities replaced it with the statue of Ștefan cel Mare, moved from its historic location by the park. From 1949 to 1991, there was once again a monument to V. I. Lenin. Nineteen years after the monument to V. Lenin was dismantled, in 2010, a monument to the victims of communist-that is, Stalinist-totalitarianism, resembling a gravestone, was erected on the square, which had come to be called Great National Assembly Square. There is no funerary stone in any capital-city square in the world (apart from the Kremlin acropolis). Monuments in city centers are erected for the living, not for the dead. Monuments to statesmen, who may or may not be liked, are erected in city squares, but a gravestone in the country’s central square is absurd! Why did no one ask the capital’s residents for their opinion on this matter? Who is the author of this masterpiece? On what grounds was permission granted for its installation?

But if the logic of events is to be followed, then another stone should be erected here, in this same square. If the first commemorates the 50,000 people deported by Stalin, the second should commemorate the more than 300,000 people exterminated by General I. Antonescu.

Perhaps what is needed is simply a “chapel,” where people could pay tribute to their memory and stand alone, and it should be located in an appropriate place?

And how many times has the republic’s Main Square changed its name in recent times: Victory Square, Lenin Square, Great National Assembly Square.

Is it not the same with Chișinău’s main street? It was renamed five times: until the 1840s-Millionnaya; then, until 1877-Moskovskaya; until 1919-Alexandrovskaya Street; until 1940-Alexandru cel Bun and King Ferdinand Street; from 1952 to 1989-it bore Lenin’s name; today-it is Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard.

One group comes to power-and changes it; another comes-and changes it. It is as though the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars, signed in 1918, “On the Removal of Monuments Erected in Honor of Tsars and Their Servants and the Development of Designs for Monuments to the Russian Socialist Revolution,” eternally alive, is hovering over the republic. To commemorate the great upheaval that transformed Russia, the Council of People’s Commissars decrees: “Monuments erected in honor of tsars and their servants and possessing neither historical nor artistic interest shall be removed from squares and streets and shall partly be transferred to warehouses and partly put to utilitarian use.

And so it began. Experts were found, and salvage materials went to work. It all stems from a lack of culture.

The location of a monument must be determined by a governing document-the city’s master plan. It must designate the places where monumental objects may be installed. When the need for a particular monument arises, an investor, public organization, or private individual is found, and permission for its installation is obtained through the mayor’s office. Depending on the object, the area and size of the monument are determined; what follows is prescribed in the detailed planning project. This monument, erected with private funds, is property, and no one has the right to encroach upon it; the money is neither state money nor taxpayers’ money, and under the law neither the “Reds” nor the “Whites” may demolish it.

If the state itself wishes to erect a monument with budget funds, then the appropriate democratic procedures must be carried out. First: hold a competition for the monument, have it reviewed by a competent jury, and submit it for consideration by the townspeople, since it is they who pay for the project through their taxes. Two adjacent ballot boxes, by the number of “balls” in each, will show whether the townspeople like the project or not and whether they are prepared to pay their money for it. Otherwise, why do we need the institution of democracy?

There are only two such “protected” monuments in Chișinău: the first, as noted above, is the bust of A. S. Pushkin, and the second is the monument to the Komsomol heroes on G. Vieru Boulevard (the monument’s creators were sculptor L. I. Dubinovsky and architect F. P. Naumov, 1959), which was erected in honor of the young patriots who died in the struggle for the freedom of Moldavia. This monument was erected at the initiative of and with funds raised through voluntary Saturday and Sunday work campaigns by the republic’s youth.

Particular care must be taken when erecting monuments at historic sites. Together with art historian K. Ciobanu, I served as a reviewer during the consideration of first-round competition designs for the “Monument to the Victims of Stalinist Repression” in front of the railway station building. In my comments, I pointed out that the platforms of this station were not the historic departure sites of those who were subjected to repression. I spoke with people who had been exiled; they said that they had been sent away from platforms located closer to the Visterniceni district and Revaca station, but not from the platforms of the Chișinău railway station. The Chișinău station, built in 1948 (architect L. Chuprin), evokes entirely different associations for the townspeople: business trips and travel, holidays in Odesa, Sochi, and Crimea. The development plan for the entire square in front of the station resembles a memorial. A mournful square in the center of a residential district?.. Memorial complexes are generally placed beyond residential areas, where one can remain in silence and surrender to sorrowful memories.

I participated in the design of the square in front of the Administrative Building of the Communist Party (now the Parliament building) and the monument to Marx and Engels. A solution for this two-figure composition was submitted for review several times. Finally, sculptor L. Dubinovsky found a convincing solution for the monument’s proportions and its relationship to the space and the building.

In monumental art, the principal factor is the harmonious placement of a monument within its environment. It must neither obstruct nor overpower the nearby architecture; therefore, when a monument is placed in an architectural setting, two creators always collaborate: an architect and a sculptor.

And, of course, the principle that “a vacant place never stays empty” is absolutely wrong. Why must another monument, radically opposed in ideology-the Monument to Freedom-necessarily appear on the site of the “founding fathers of Marxism”? One set of liberators from slavery was immortalized; must a monument to another liberation now stand on the same site? And will those who come next erect a monument to their own liberation? And so on without end? Perhaps it is time to abandon this practice? To refer to the master plan and select worthy locations professionally, rather than spontaneously and by intuition, especially since this very master plan for the city’s development contains sections describing architectural development, the skyline, and the landscape.

In Soviet times, the city executive committee had the position of deputy chief architect of the city, who was also the city’s chief artist (today this person would be called the city’s chief designer and would be responsible for the design of the urban environment). Thus, the chief artist developed and was responsible for the city’s ideological and artistic design-that is, its parks, public gardens, monuments, signs, and festive decorations-precisely those things that today have been left to drift.

Every architectural structure or monument must be protected by copyright. The Eternitate Memorial Complex, opened in 1975, should exist within this same legal framework (its original name was the Memorial of Military Glory, subsequently the Victory Memorial; sculptors A. Maiko and I. Poniatowski and architect A. Minaev, who won the competition in 1966 and competently brought this project to fruition). The memorial was erected in honor of the soldiers who died in the battles to liberate Moldavia and Chișinău from the German fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War. Suddenly, in 2006, without a competition being announced or consideration by any architectural and artistic council, the memorial complex was completely remodeled under the pretext of “reconstruction.” The work was a piece of landscape architecture and a composition consisting of five stelae depicting in relief the five years of the war. The crowning feature of the complex is a group of twenty-five-meter stylized rifles stacked in a pyramid. Below, at the center of the composition, burns the eternal flame.

And what exactly was reconstructed there? Small pavilions and bells were simply added to the grounds, while a large wreath of glory, beside which an eternal flame usually burns, lies on the grass. And it is entirely unclear why this public place was enclosed by an utterly incongruous fence, whose construction incorporates illuminated globes, folkloric stone flowers, elements of carpet weaving rendered in metal, elements of classicism, and so forth. A “hodgepodge,” in a word! The monument of the 1960s was transformed into no one knows what. It lost its laconicism and monumentality.

If one walks around the city, one can see many very interesting things in the field of monumental art. For example, if you go west, you will come to the main entrance of Valea Morilor Park, where you are greeted by a large stone, similar to the one erected in the main square, bearing a large Christian cross. But according to old-timers, it was on this very site that mass executions of Jews took place at the beginning of the war. If you go north-along G. Vieru Boulevard, formerly Renașterii Boulevard-beyond the monument to the Komsomol Heroes stand two more monuments: to the Olympic Games and to Delfiada 2004. Farther down, the erection of a monument to G. Vieru is planned (a competition for this monument has been held). Are there not too many monuments along a stretch of two hundred meters?

If you go south-to the Gaudeamus Cinema-at its rear, twenty meters from the monument to the fighters for Soviet power, stands a monument to Pan Halippa. For me, as an architect, for example, the placement and architecture of this monument are unconvincing. One can also go east... and find a similar picture there!

We rename, remodel, relocate, and demolish things all too easily, believing that there will be no repercussions. But that is not how it works. As the wise saying goes: “Do not shoot at history with a pistol, for it will fire back at you with a cannon.”