Education and Art in Soviet Russia/Document 34

DOCUMENT No. 34

Memorial Plates for Propaganda Purposes

At the Commissariat of Education, at the initiative of Lenin, a plan for employing memorial plates for propaganda purposes is being worked out at present. A selection of citations and slogans illustrating the moment will be made. These citations will be engraved on stone or bronze plates and placed on the main thoroughfares of the cities. The best artists will be entrusted with the execution of the work. The unveiling of each of these memorial plates will be made a celebration with speeches, the text of the particular citation forming the theme. A musical program will also be a feature at these occasions.

It has also been decided to erect at convenient points of the capitals monuments to great personages distinguished in the Russian and world revolutions. These monuments are proposed to be made not of everlasting bronze or marble, but rather to take the form of plaster and terra-cotta statues for propaganda purposes. At the base of each statue will be placed a stone-slab with a short biography of and quotations from its subject.

The statues will be unveiled on Sundays and will be accompanied by speeches bearing on the significance of the individual in question, reading of selected passages from his works and a musical program. The same evening at one of the main city theatres will be given either a performance or a concert in honor of the person celebrated.

As a beginning it is proposed to erect statues of Radischey, Ryliev, Pestel, Belinsky, Dobroluibov, Tchernyshevsky and Nekrasov.

Mr. Sherwood, sculptor, will direct the work.

 

(Translator's note: The above-named publicists, philosophers, writers and poets, were the intellectual precursors of the revolutionary movement in Russia, active principally in the 1825–50 period. Tchernyshevsky's famous work, "What's to be Done?" is a complete analysis of the intellectual currents of that period.—Sherwood is a common Russian name, of English origin:)