Lines of Action and Ready­made Stones: Lev Rudnev’s Mon­u­ment to the Vic­tims of the Revolution¹

Introduction – Approach and Contexts

The archi­tec­ture of the Sovi­et Union has often been deemed as a fail­ure, inca­pable of answer­ing the needs of the sys­tem, unsuc­cess­ful in cre­at­ing its own spe­cif­ic space to con­tribute to the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process and new polit­i­cal sys­tem.4 In this, I will con­tend oth­er­wise. Tak­ing my cues from recent his­to­ries of the Sovi­et Union turned to space and the study of ​“spa­tial dynam­ics of ide­ol­o­gy” to use Eric Naiman’s words, 5 as well as from what Nan­cy Stieber has called archi­tec­tur­al history’s strength and need to ​“rein­sert for­mal analy­sis of the visu­al into the prob­lem­at­ic of social space,”6 I will close­ly study a spe­cif­ic mon­u­ment in order to elu­ci­date the spa­tial and for­mal qual­i­ties and mech­a­nisms of archi­tec­ture to take part and advance the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process in Rus­sia dur­ing the year of rev­o­lu­tions of 1917 and soon after. Focus­ing on the Mon­u­ment to the Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion by Lev Rud­nev, trac­ing its his­to­ry of design, con­struc­tion, the mean­ings relat­ed to it, its roles in rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­tiv­i­ties and its for­mal and spa­tial qual­i­ties, I will show how it sin­gu­lar­ly and specif­i­cal­ly played an impor­tant role in spa­tial­ly and for­mal­ly con­struct­ing and artic­u­lat­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary myths and ideals dur­ing the ear­ly years of the rev­o­lu­tion, and how it more gen­er­al­ly exem­pli­fies the ways in which art and archi­tec­ture took part in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process. I analyse the mon­u­ment both as an impor­tant ear­ly project that act­ed as a mod­el for future mon­u­ments as well as an exam­ple of some ten­den­cies and mech­a­nisms of Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary art that go beyond debates on spe­cif­ic styles or idioms of art. I chart the lines along which archi­tec­ture can be polit­i­cal and take part in process­es of mod­ern­iza­tion, the qual­i­ty of these lines as marks on the ground as much as lines of action on and above ground. I ques­tion the pos­si­ble rela­tion­ships of these lines to the sur­round­ing city as well as the peo­ple that inhab­it it, their bod­ies and actions through which archi­tec­ture and its mean­ings can be performed.

Before start­ing with the sto­ry of the mon­u­ment itself, I will briefly lay­out key con­texts for my dis­cus­sion. First­ly, set­ting the mon­u­ment with­in the con­text of the debates in between the ​“left” and ​“right” artists, as the Futur­ists and oth­er Mod­ernists, and the tra­di­tion­al­ists were respec­tive­ly called at the time, will allow me to dis­cuss the com­plex ques­tions of moder­ni­ty and rev­o­lu­tion­ary ide­ol­o­gy in rela­tion to archi­tec­tur­al form. I will show how moder­ni­ty and rev­o­lu­tion­ary ambi­tions were not only relat­ed to the forms con­sid­ered ​“Mod­ernist” by the his­to­ri­ogra­phies of archi­tec­ture, but how in par­tic­u­lar in the quin­tes­sen­tial­ly neo­clas­si­cal city of St. Peters­burg, rethink­ing of the ​“clas­si­cal” could prove equal­ly, if not more, pow­er­ful than the dis­rup­tive means of ​“Mod­ernism” in rein­vent­ing and dis­man­tling the spa­tial and for­mal pow­er struc­tures relat­ed to the city, its archi­tec­ture and its myths, and in forg­ing new ones. Anoth­er key con­text for this dis­cus­sion is the rev­o­lu­tion. I will con­sid­er the mon­u­ment in the con­text of the his­to­ry of Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment and the events in which it cul­mi­nat­ed in 1917. I will explore the con­text of the myths the rev­o­lu­tion car­ried with it, ful­filled and cre­at­ed, and in par­tic­u­lar the myths of ​“the demon­stra­tion” and ​“the strike”. If not already before, since the begin­ning of the 1905 rev­o­lu­tion on the Bloody Sun­day of Jan­u­ary 97 when strik­ing demon­stra­tors were met with bul­lets on St. Petersburg’s Palace Square, these myths were solid­i­fied as the foun­da­tion­al pil­lars and moti­va­tion­al forces of the Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment. Accord­ing to Mar­shall Berman, the ​“demon­stra­tion of Jan­u­ary 9 is a form of moder­ni­ty that springs from Petersburg’s dis­tinc­tive soil.”8 It sum­moned togeth­er and made vis­i­ble the shad­ows of the city who had been pushed to the fringes and into its huge indus­tri­al zone that by 1905 cir­cled the city, into attics and base­ments of the crammed court­yards of the city cen­tre, now to demand sim­ply recog­ni­tion of their human val­ue. Such dynam­ics and dual­i­ty had been a run­ning theme in the city’s lit­er­ary tra­di­tion for a long time and per­haps most pow­er­ful­ly embod­ied in Dostoyevsky’s anti­heroes and the ​“under­ground man,” but it was in Jan­u­ary 1905 as the demon­stra­tors took to the streets in St. Peters­burg, and fol­low­ing that all around the coun­try, that this demand mate­ri­alised and the myth fig­ured in real flesh and space of the city. This expe­ri­ence and its rep­re­sen­ta­tions engraved the strike and demon­stra­tion, the occu­pa­tion of pub­lic space and the pub­lic sphere as its exten­sion as the essen­tial myth of the Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion. I con­tend that this was also essen­tial­ly present as a motive force in the design of pub­lic space and mon­u­ments fol­low­ing the rev­o­lu­tions of 1917. 

Berman’s notion quot­ed above also men­tions the third essen­tial con­text for my dis­cus­sion: the city itself and its ​“dis­tinc­tive soil”. Since its found­ing by its name­sake Peter I, Peters­burg essen­tial­ly act­ed as an exten­sion of the emperor’s body. Its neo­clas­si­cal edi­fices, palaces and mon­u­men­tal squares strong­ly rep­re­sent­ed and embod­ied impe­r­i­al pow­er and the state appa­ra­tus, which in Rus­sia, even more than in the rest of Europe, were insep­a­ra­ble in their per­cep­tion.9 Not only was the image of the emper­or embod­ied in the city, but Petersburg's real­i­ty at large is par­tic­u­lar­ly insep­a­ra­ble from its myth and lit­er­ary ​“text”, prompt­ing one of the most notable authors on this myth, Yuri Lot­man to char­ac­ter­ize the city as ​“a place where semi­otic mod­els were embod­ied in archi­tec­tur­al and geo­graph­i­cal real­i­ty”.10 This means that in many ways the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the city is insep­a­ra­ble from a set of mean­ings giv­en to it in lit­er­a­ture and lore, its ​“myth”, its ​“text”—something true per­haps for any city, but par­tic­u­lar­ly so for Peters­burg. From Pushkin’s poems to Dostoyevsky’s or Gogol’s sto­ries, Peters­burg is a city where the life of its inhab­i­tants takes place under the duress of strong and severe mon­u­ments and archi­tec­ture rep­re­sent­ing pow­er. This is the city that Andrey Bely describes as one whose ​“streets pos­sess one indu­bitable qual­i­ty: they trans­form passers-by into shad­ows” in his quin­tes­sen­tial mod­ern depic­tion of the city and iter­a­tion of its myth.11 In Bely’s nov­el set in the tur­moil of 1905 and first pub­lished in 1913, a group of anar­chists plot against the fig­ures pow­er. These anar­chists, and the ​“shad­ows” of the city more gen­er­al­ly, inhab­it its fringes—the sub­urbs on the islands, the base­ments and attics. In the nov­el the only result of the anar­chists’ plot is a small vac­u­um, a tem­po­rary move­ment of the fig­ure of pow­er. And so it was with the rev­o­lu­tion of 1905, it achieved some tem­po­rary free­doms and changes, but result­ed into lit­tle in the long run. Yet it had for­ev­er changed the per­cep­tion of the space of the city as a site for the shad­ows to become flesh and reverse the order of the city. The space of city was left changed, no longer inno­cent, but charged with a new potential. 

I will analyse the lines along which the Mon­u­ment to the Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion reflects and artic­u­lates these ten­sions in the space of the city and how it filled this charged space after the rev­o­lu­tion turned things upside down. Assert­ing the myth of the city and the mean­ings that so strong­ly relate to its archi­tec­ture as an essen­tial con­text for the design, I will show how the mon­u­ment dis­man­tles the pow­er-struc­tures relat­ed to Petersburg’s ​“dis­tinc­tive soil” and how it spa­tial­ly fused the myths of the city to those of the rev­o­lu­tion. Trac­ing the marks on the ground as well as the lines of action through which these myths mate­ri­alised and were per­formed, I will elu­ci­date the spa­tial dynam­ics of ide­ol­o­gy as well as the ide­o­log­i­cal poet­ics of the Russ­ian revolution.

The Story of the Monument

The sto­ry of the mon­u­ment begins in Feb­ru­ary 1917 when, exhaust­ed by the World War and sick and tired of the monar­chy, the peo­ple of Peters­burg renamed Petr­tograd some years ear­li­er, 12 once again took to the streets. This time, after a week of demon­stra­tions and clash­es, and after the army took the side of the peo­ple, the monarch gave in and abdi­cat­ed the throne on March 3.13 The promise of the myth had been ful­filled. The peo­ple on the streets got their recog­ni­tion and free­dom, the city and the coun­try were theirs as the Pro­vi­sion­al Gov­ern­ment seized pow­er in order to estab­lish a democ­ra­cy. But what hap­pened to the city itself now that it had been tak­en over, how did the new rule fig­ure in its spaces? Strip­ping down and destroy­ing monar­chic sym­bols had been an impor­tant feat of the rev­o­lu­tion itself,14 and mark­ing the vic­to­ry in pub­lic space con­tin­ued right after the seizure of pow­er, as with­in days a deci­sion was made to bury the vic­tims of the rev­o­lu­tion in the cen­tre of the city. The mon­u­ment that is the top­ic of this arti­cle is the mon­u­ment that marks these graves, but there were still steps to be tak­en before the mon­u­ment could be built. The site was heav­i­ly debat­ed at the Pet­ro­grad Sovi­et, a demo­c­ra­t­ic forum that had exist­ed since the after­math of the 1905 rev­o­lu­tion and was revived and rein­forced by the Feb­ru­ary rev­o­lu­tion. Here, the high came in touch with the low as cul­tur­al elites clashed with the reg­u­lar peo­ple, work­ers and sol­diers.15 The first was large­ly dom­i­nat­ed by a group of men apt­ly titled by Kate­ri­na Clark as ​“Preser­va­tion­ists”, who har­nessed a cult of ​“Old Peters­burg” and to whom cher­ish­ing and reviv­ing the clas­si­cal image of the city had already been their leit­mo­tif for two decades.16 The lat­ter were the peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly pushed away to the fringes, to whom the city rep­re­sent­ed an image of oppres­sion and dom­i­nance rather than that of puri­ty. The Palace Square advo­cat­ed by the work­ers as the cen­tral open space of impe­r­i­al pow­er and the sym­bol­ic scenery of the tragedy and sac­ri­fice of the Bloody Sun­day in 1905 was select­ed as the site of the bur­ial, but the deci­sion was recon­sid­ered and even­tu­al­ly over­ruled because the Preser­va­tion­ists thought the his­toric space and its archi­tec­ture should not be inter­fered with and the exist­ing ensem­ble would not allow a new mon­u­ment to be built there.17 Instead, the self-assem­bled com­mis­sion of arts head­ed by Max­im Gorky, but manned most­ly by the Preser­va­tion­ists such as the artists Alexan­der Benois, Mstislav Dobuzhin­sky, the archi­tect Ivan Fomin and the opera singer Fyo­dor Shalyapin,18 pro­posed two alter­na­tive sites: the square in front of the Kazan Cathe­dral, and the Field of Mars, the lat­ter of which was even­tu­al­ly chosen.

Locat­ed a stone’s throw away from the Palace Square and part of the sequence of the cen­tral mon­u­men­tal spaces of the city, this square might not have been sym­bol­i­cal­ly as pow­er­ful a site as the Palace Square, but it was a fine sec­ond: as the parade grounds of the mil­i­tary it was a key space of the pow­er of the empire, but it was also here, where the ear­li­est shots of the Feb­ru­ary rev­o­lu­tion had been shot, and it was the sol­diers of the adja­cent bar­racks of the Pavlovsky Reg­i­ments who were the first to shift their alle­giances to the revolution’s side dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary days. More­over, the site had not only a mil­i­tary but also a civil­ian and civic his­to­ry: it had espe­cial­ly, since the late 19^th cen­tu­ry, act­ed as a site for fairs and cel­e­bra­tions as well as recre­ation­al activ­i­ties, host­ing an ice skat­ing rink dur­ing win­ters and var­i­ous sea­son­al fes­tiv­i­ties round the year.19 There had also been plans to place the build­ing for the parliament—the Duma—on this site since it was estab­lished in 1906, and even an archi­tec­tur­al com­pe­ti­tion had been orga­nized towards this end in 1913.20 These were also the argu­ments for the site as pre­sent­ed by the cul­tur­al com­mis­sion: the graves of the vic­tims of the rev­o­lu­tion could here be joined by a new house of par­lia­ment to be built on the field, and togeth­er they would form a new mon­u­men­tal ensem­ble com­mem­o­rat­ing the Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion, its vic­tims and heroes, ded­i­cat­ed to the new pow­er. The argu­ment was pre­sent­ed to the assem­bly of the Sovi­et by the archi­tects Ivan Fomin and Lev Rud­nev with large draw­ings fea­tur­ing a fan­tas­tic pro­pos­al where the graves were joined to the par­lia­ment by mon­u­men­tal por­ti­coes with gal­leries of sculp­tures.21 Even if dri­ven by preser­va­tion­ist ideals, such a pro­pos­al also illus­trates the fact that the emp­ty field did bet­ter work as a space to project the future fan­tasies and aspi­ra­tions of the rev­o­lu­tion. Even if mark­ing and reded­i­cat­ing the Palace Square with the graves might have been a more pow­er­ful ges­ture towards tak­ing over the old, the emp­ty space of the Field of Mars allowed build­ing some­thing new that not only sym­bol­i­cal­ly, but also active­ly took part in build­ing the future soci­ety. With this deci­sion the Field of Mars was to become ​“the main pub­lic space of com­mem­o­ra­tion, the altar of the cult of rev­o­lu­tion” to use the words of the his­to­ri­ans Orlan­do Figes and Boris Kolonit­skij, and the con­tours and lines that made this altar could be drawn more freely.22 The first act towards this end was the bur­ial itself. [ 1 ]

It took place on March 23, 1917. Evok­ing ref­er­ences to French rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­vals, also staged on Paris’ Field of Mars from 1790 onwards, the bur­ial took the form of a mas­sive march with hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple tak­ing part. The event evoked and rehearsed the myths of the strike and demon­stra­tion trans­lat­ing them into a prac­tice of build­ing a future soci­ety. The chore­og­ra­phy of the bur­ial was planned to fol­low the lines of action of the demon­stra­tions, with large groups of peo­ple mov­ing from a set of impor­tant places in the sub­urbs of the city, such as the sites of major fac­to­ries. Lev Rud­nev, the young archi­tect who had pre­sent­ed the fan­tas­tic plans for the site’s future with his teacher Ivan Fomin was put in charge of the dec­o­ra­tions for the event. 23 They were made in a rush, sim­ple and con­sist­ed of red flags, which had become the main sym­bol of the rev­o­lu­tion and coffins paint­ed red play­ing a lead­ing role togeth­er with impro­vised ban­ners. More impor­tant was the action itself, turn­ing the myth­i­cal tools of the revolution—the strike and the demonstration—into a cel­e­bra­tion that would turn the city itself inside out, per­ma­nent­ly ren­der­ing it anew. The move­ment of the peo­ple from the sub­urbs to the cen­tre and the lay­ing of the vic­tims to rest on the Field of Mars turned this cen­tral space of the city into a per­ma­nent reminder and mon­u­ment to the new order. The space was no-longer charged with the ten­sions of oppres­sion or marked with blood, now it was charged with and marked by the free pres­ence of the peo­ple. Alexan­dre Kol­lon­tai, then a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty, and lat­er an influ­en­tial Bol­she­vik, wrote about the event on the day: ​“Today sees the com­ple­tion of the first stage of the rev­o­lu­tion, the stage which con­sists of the destruc­tion of the old.” Accord­ing to her, now it was the time to ​“hur­ry” in order to ​“cre­ate the new!” Her words bear wit­ness to the fact that the bur­ial of the vic­tims played a dou­ble func­tion, first­ly, it solid­i­fied and per­ma­nent­ly marked a vic­to­ry and the new type of pres­ence of the peo­ple in the cen­tre of the city. On the oth­er hand, the event also defined a ref­er­en­tial point: the graves were a re-enact­ment of some­thing that had been, but they were also a begin­ning and the rehearsal for some­thing new, a first step towards the cre­ation of a new real­i­ty. This was some­thing that had also been reflect­ed in the debates about the site of the bur­ial as Max­im Gorky’ had spo­ken for the Field of Mars as the site to build a new Bol­she­vik cul­ture and for a series of new rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­vals.24 These dynam­ics were also to be reflect­ed in the mon­u­ment itself: it was to be an altar, but also a stage—to set the foun­da­tion­al lines towards build­ing a new cul­ture, not only through actu­al build­ing, but also through action and performance.

Readymade Stones

The com­pe­ti­tion for the mon­u­ment organ­ised short­ly after the bur­ial was won by Lev Rud­nev, with a pro­pos­al titled Ready­made Stones (“Gotovye Kam­ny”).25 Writ­ing about the mon­u­ment in 1935, Rud­nev described its gen­e­sis in ref­er­ence to the event of the bur­ial in March 1917:

His pro­pos­al reflects and trans­lates this vision into a per­ma­nent mon­u­ment. The mon­u­ment con­sists of sim­ple, rough gran­ite blocks stacked on top of the graves step­ping up in four lay­ers form­ing in their sec­tion a flat zig­gu­rat. In plan they make four straight angles form­ing a mon­u­men­tal open square in the mid­dle of the field. The gables of each of the L‑shaped blocks have a large cubic block the height of the whole mon­u­ment and are ele­vat­ed on two cap­i­tal-like forms that sup­port them at each cor­ner. The gables are adorned by short poems writ­ten by the min­is­ter of enlight­en­ment of the new admin­is­tra­tion Ana­toly Lunacharsky. The gran­ite blocks used in the monument—the ​“ready­made stones”—were exact­ly that, gran­ite from the foun­da­tions of the neo­clas­si­cal Impe­r­i­al Salt Mag­a­zines designed by one of the Preser­va­tion­ists’ favourite archi­tects Jean-Fran­coise Thomas de Thomon in 1805-07 and demol­ished in 1914.27 The form of the stag­gered stones mark­ing the cor­ners of a square presents a sim­ple, aus­tere inter­pre­ta­tion of a clas­si­cal order based on pla­ton­ic solids and sim­ple tec­ton­ics. It refers to the exper­i­ments of French rev­o­lu­tion­ary archi­tec­ture, but also offers a gen­uine­ly new and inven­tive rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the clas­si­cal idiom in a sim­i­lar spir­it to Peter Behrens’ Ger­man Embassy com­plet­ed in Peters­burg a few years earlier—a new, rethought and abstract­ed clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

The mon­u­ment on one hand appeased and exe­cut­ed the ideals of Rudnev’s preser­va­tion­ist peers in res­onat­ing with their vision of St. Peters­burg: it sub­tly and qui­et­ly embraced, reflect­ed and reit­er­at­ed its char­ac­ter­is­tic hor­i­zon­tal­i­ty, severe­ness and austerity—the key qual­i­ties attrib­uted to the city by the preser­va­tion­ists.28 The Soci­ety of the Archi­tects-Artists in charge of the com­pe­ti­tion had direct­ly out­lined that the mon­u­ment should be ​“sim­ple in its char­ac­ter, with­out any mon­u­men­tal struc­tures”.29 Thus, the form of the mon­u­ment can be seen as an artic­u­la­tion of the vision of the city’s char­ac­ter­is­tics as it was seen by the dom­i­nant preser­va­tion­ist cir­cles while also seek­ing to for­mal­ly cre­ate a new kind of mon­u­ment aris­ing from these prin­ci­ples. On the oth­er hand, the form of the mon­u­ment can be con­strued along the lines of the myth of the demon­stra­tion itself. The sym­bol­ism of the ready­made stones, moved from the fringes to the cen­tre, as Rud­nev him­self empha­sized, rehears­es the lines of move­ment of the work­ers mak­ing the idea of the demon­stra­tion and the inver­sive promise of the rev­o­lu­tion an inher­ent part of the mon­u­ment. More­over, the use of the gran­ite blocks, so essen­tial­ly relat­ed to Petersburg’s impe­r­i­al past as a kind of spo­lia, shows an appro­pri­a­tion of the impe­r­i­al her­itage, repur­pos­ing and tam­ing the city as an exten­sion of the impe­r­i­al body. The third dis­tinc­tive qual­i­ty of the mon­u­ment was its open form, reflect­ed both in its plan and in the form of the stag­gered stones them­selves. In both qual­i­ties the mon­u­ment makes a dis­tinct­ly open ges­ture, one that makes space and ges­tures poten­tial­i­ty. The open nature and the qual­i­ty of ges­tur­ing and cre­at­ing space rather than clos­ing or impos­ing a mon­u­men­tal pres­ence on space, togeth­er with its ​“foun­da­tion­al” and ​“cor­ner-stone-like” qual­i­ty, sig­ni­fy the pos­si­ble rather than the past or the exist­ing. It takes the forms and the mate­ri­als of the past and trans­lates it into the poten­tial of the new sys­tem. The open char­ac­ter of poten­tial­i­ty is fur­ther reflect­ed in the poems writ­ten by Lunacharsky for the gables of the stones. ​“No victims—heroes / lie beneath this grave / not grief but envy / gives rise to your fate”30. More than just an altar, the mon­u­ment right­ful­ly usurped the past and act­ed as an open are­na for defin­ing the future. Yet it took years for the mon­u­ment to be fin­ished. In the mean­time, it was through cel­e­bra­tion, action and per­for­mance that the site and the mon­u­ment became per­ceived as mean­ing­ful. In them, the lines imag­ined on the paper and marked on the ground by the graves, were turned into lines of action that ren­dered the space of the city anew.

Performing the Monument 

Already when argu­ing for the plac­ing of the graves on the Field of Mars instead of the Palace Square, Max­im Gorky had spo­ken of the poten­tial of the graves on the Field of Mars to turn the site into a cen­tre for a new cul­ture of the pro­le­tari­at, a space for fes­ti­vals, con­certs and celebrations—to which one of the work­ers had cried in reply: ​“instead of a pile of rub­ble, the great upris­ing needs a foun­da­tion”.31 This meaning—the mon­u­ment as a foun­da­tion for the uprising—was per­cep­tu­al­ly etched into the site via the mas­sive cel­e­bra­tions reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing place there. It was one of the main sites for the cel­e­bra­tions of the first large rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­val to fol­low the Feb­ru­ary rev­o­lu­tion and the event of the bur­ial itself—the First of May in 1917—and for all sub­se­quent rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­vals after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion. The con­struc­tion of the mon­u­ment began in the spring 1917, but only the foun­da­tions were com­plet­ed. Although the mon­u­ment had been con­ceived to com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of the Feb­ru­ary Rev­o­lu­tion, it was soon after the Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion, when the Bolshevik’s seized pow­er from the Pro­vi­sion­al Gov­ern­ment, that it became a gen­er­al rev­o­lu­tion­ary mon­u­ment. Bur­ial of sev­er­al mar­tyrs of the Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion and the civ­il war that fol­lowed, includ­ing well-known par­ty func­tionar­ies such as Moi­sei Urit­sky after his assas­si­na­tion in 1918, solid­i­fied its sta­tus as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary pan­theon32 and the use of the site itself for inspec­tions of the offi­cers of the Red Army laid a fur­ther claim to the space.33 But it was dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­tiv­i­ties that its mean­ings were made most vis­i­ble as it was tem­porar­i­ly com­plet­ed and reimag­ined in dif­fer­ent forms. These dec­o­ra­tions gave Rud­nev, who was in charge of the dec­o­ra­tions of the site for most of the fes­tiv­i­ties, a pos­si­bil­i­ty to rehearse, exper­i­ment and play with the mon­u­ment and its meanings. 

In an arti­cle titled ​“The Imme­di­ate Tasks of the Sovi­et Gov­ern­ment” writ­ten in March-April 1918, Lenin out­lines that now the Bol­she­viks have ​“con­vinced” (ube­d­it’) Rus­sia, ​“won the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the work­ing peo­ple”, and now the task is to move to ​“the prin­ci­pal task of admin­stra­tion” (upravli­at’, high­lights are Lenin’s).34 This meant re-orga­niz­ing pro­duc­tion, the state and the econ­o­my, and mov­ing from con­vinc­ing with words and promis­es to con­vinc­ing with actu­al deeds. ​“A cer­tain amount of time will inevitably pass before peo­ple, who feel free for the first time” Lenin wrote, ​“will understand—not from books, but from their own Sovi­et experience—will under­stand and feel” the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideals and mea­sures. There is an ambi­gu­i­ty to what Lenin refers to here. On one hand, it is the lived expe­ri­ence of the new sys­tem through which peo­ple will feel the new free­dom, but, as the new sys­tem was still being devel­oped and the on-going civ­il war was inter­rupt­ing everyone’s lives, the project of ​“con­vinc­ing” went on but was enhanced with a focus on feel­ing. This fur­ther evokes Lenin’s dual con­cep­tion of media that he had already out­lined in his 1902 pam­phlet What is to Be Done,35 mak­ing a divide between the ​“agi­ta­tor” and the ​“propagandist”—the first focus­ing on oral prop­a­ga­tion to the mass­es and the lat­ter on writ­ten argu­men­ta­tion direct­ed to the urban mid­dle class­es.36 It was in the fes­ti­vals and oth­er means to make the new order vis­i­ble and felt in pub­lic space, a venue where the agi­ta­tor could meet the pro­pa­gan­dist and con­vinc­ing could meet feel­ing. The pub­lic space of the city tak­en over by the rev­o­lu­tion served as the site and means to bring the words to the surface—to the skin—and as such turned them into vis­cer­al sen­sa­tions prof­fered by the new sys­tem. The fes­ti­vals as re-enact­ments and phys­i­cal rehearsals of the myths of the rev­o­lu­tions served just that: togeth­er with Lenin’s Plan for Mon­u­men­tal Pro­pa­gan­da, which out­lined a project erect­ing mon­u­ments to rev­o­lu­tion­ary heroes in pub­lic space, and with the projects of the Ros­ta state news agency to turn shop win­dows and pub­lic space at large into dis­plays of posters, pam­phlets and oth­er state pro­pa­gan­da, the pub­lic space was hence sat­u­rat­ed with infor­ma­tion that could both be read and felt.

The begin­ning of the process of re-imag­in­ing the city as a social­ist one and as a site for both prop­a­ga­tion and agi­ta­tion were out­lined in a decree ​“On Mon­u­ments to the Repub­lic” on April 12, 1918. 37 It set forth the ambi­tion to puri­fy the space of the city of impe­r­i­al mon­u­ments, and a call for new ones togeth­er with rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­vals begin­ning on the First of May 1918. The plan clear­ly joins the mas­sive action and per­for­mances with a more per­ma­nent aim to ren­der anew the space of the city. It serves as a vision to turn the city into a field of active polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the term ​“Mon­u­men­tal Pro­pa­gan­da” itself clear­ly describ­ing the dou­ble aspect of the plan, the pro­pa­gan­da and the polit­i­cal mes­sage com­mu­ni­cat­ed on a mon­u­men­tal scale in the city. The decree shows how the per­for­ma­tive, phys­i­cal and per­ma­nent, as well as the con­vinc­ing and feel­ing were to work hand in hand. The fes­ti­val was not only a means to tem­porar­i­ly reimag­ine the city, but to also change it per­ma­nent­ly, as part of it was ​“to replace inscrip­tions, emblems, street names, coats of arms etc.”, con­tin­u­ing that the new ones should reflect both the ​“ideas” (“idey”) as well as the ​“feel­ings” (“chu­vstv”) of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia.38 This mix­ing of the per­for­ma­tive and the per­ma­nent and the feel­ings with the ideas worked with all the mon­u­ments to be erect­ed. Lunacharsky lat­er empha­sized the impor­tance of the unveil­ings of all mon­u­ments call­ing each a small rev­o­lu­tion­ary cel­e­bra­tion of their own.39 The new decree made the com­ple­tion of the mon­u­ment top­i­cal again, and with the new rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­tiv­i­ties, it con­tin­ued as one of the cen­tral sites for them to take place. Pho­tographs from the cel­e­bra­tions of the First of May in 1918 show crowds of peo­ple gath­ered by the mon­u­ment. Only part of the stones defin­ing the first lev­el of the mon­u­ment are in place, the remain­der of its lines mark­ing the graves filled with spruce branch­es. In the mid­dle can be seen a cubi­cal zig­gu­rat-like mon­u­ment topped with fly­ing flags, dou­bling as a tri­bune and podi­um, from where speech­es were orat­ed.40 [ 5 ]41 These fes­ti­vals turned the mon­u­ment from a grave into an altar of agi­ta­tion as it lit­er­al­ly serves as the lines mark­ing not only the graves, but organ­is­ing the col­lec­tive body of peo­ple and ele­vat­ing them above the ground to be heard. They also gave Rud­nev, who was put in charge of dec­o­ra­tions for the Field of Mars dur­ing the first years of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cel­e­bra­tions, to rehearse the form, qual­i­ties and mean­ings of the mon­u­ment.42

Besides the First of May, the anniver­sary of the Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion was the most impor­tant day of cel­e­bra­tion. Dur­ing the first anniver­sary in 1918, the whole cen­tre of the city was dec­o­rat­ed with flags and can­vas­es, stages and tem­po­rary struc­tures hung and erect­ed across the city. On Palace Square Natan Alt­man designed and insert­ed large geo­met­ric forms on top of arch­es, facades and most famous­ly around the pedestal of the gigan­tic Alexan­der Col­umn in the mid­dle of the square. These cubist and futur­ist planes with geo­met­ric forms, stag­ger­ing rhythms and col­laged com­po­si­tions sought to dis­rupt and con­tra­dict the lines that dom­i­nate the space of the city [ 6 ]43 . The form of Rudnev’s inter­ven­tions on the neigh­bour­ing square, which ful­fil his still unfin­ished mon­u­ment, on the oth­er hand, worked with and along these lines in har­mo­ny. But, at the same time and while work­ing with the old, he pushed towards some­thing com­plete­ly new. His dec­o­ra­tions with the mon­u­ment, quite lit­er­al­ly grow­ing behind them, not only reflects the hor­i­zon­tal lines that dom­i­nate the space of the neo-clas­si­cal city, but essen­tial­ly appro­pri­ates it, rein­vents it and charges it with a new mean­ing. It joins the hor­i­zon­tal lines with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea of the col­lec­tive body, the move­ment of the work­ers from the fringes and the inver­sive pow­er of the rev­o­lu­tion. This can be seen expressed as lines on paper in a gen­er­al plan of the field sketched out by Rud­nev in free hand for the dec­o­ra­tions. It shows the inter­play of the solid­i­ty of the mon­u­ment, the cor­ners of which are marked with black ink, and the free flow of peo­ple marked in light green water­colour with small black spots indi­cat­ing the crowds with­in this flow­ing mass.44 The strict geom­e­try and the rigid­i­ty of the lines mark­ing the four cor­ners of the mon­u­ment in the mid­dle of the sheet togeth­er with the green flow­ing line of the crowd that nat­u­ral­ly curves across the field, past the mon­u­ment from one cor­ner to the oth­er spread­ing in two dif­fer­ent paths across and along the riv­er Neva, togeth­er com­plete the mean­ing of the mon­u­ment. The flow of the crowd as well as the mon­u­ment are high­light­ed and accen­tu­at­ed with red ink and water­colour mark­ing the tem­po­rary gates, arch­es, flags and posters along the route of the crowds, an obelisk stand­ing in the midst of the mon­u­ment, and a tem­po­rary wall that sur­round­ing it. The draw­ing seems to car­ry some of the aspi­ra­tions that the tem­po­rary dec­o­ra­tions, the planned mon­u­ment, and the pres­ence of the cel­e­brat­ing mass­es were to bring to the site. Its jux­ta­po­si­tion of the strict geom­e­try of the mon­u­ment to the joy­ous line mark­ing the stream of peo­ple, the light­ness of touch present in the water­colour to the dark ink, the dif­fer­ent play­ful scripts of anno­ta­tions around the draw­ing, the loose appli­ca­tion of water­colour and the speed and the light­ness of touch give the draw­ing an enthu­si­as­tic appear­ance where flow and move­ment meets solid­i­ty. These lines on paper rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al­ly deliv­er a com­pli­men­ta­ry act to those on the ground as the mon­u­ment is per­formed through action. 

Anoth­er study by Rud­nev for the same event shows the mon­u­ment itself, sur­round­ed by a tem­po­rary wall with an obelisk in the middle—its unfin­ished stone struc­ture is turned into a wall of mov­ing peo­ple. Action and the move­ment of the col­lec­tive body of the peo­ple takes the place of the stones, rehears­ing and under­lin­ing the point that the mon­u­ment solid­i­fies the pres­ence of this body in the cen­tre of the city, while also mak­ing a con­tin­u­a­tion of the present demon­stra­tors to the victim’s and heroes’ past rev­o­lu­tion­ary actions that lie in the graves beneath it.45 [ 7 ]46 Even if so dif­fer­ent in their form and alle­giances, there seems to be a fun­da­men­tal sim­i­lar­i­ty in Rudnev’s and Altman’s dec­o­ra­tions for the anniver­sary. They both employ artis­tic form and its spa­tial impli­ca­tions in facil­i­tat­ing a dynamism between the new­ly empow­ered col­lec­tive body of the work­ers and the impe­r­i­al city, and this is the essence of the nov­el­ty of both of their works.

The monument’s ful­fil­ment came with its unveil­ing on the sec­ond anniver­sary of the rev­o­lu­tion, where the sym­bol­ic act of the work­ers’ move­ment from the sub­urbs to the cen­tre was once again per­formed. This time the mon­u­ment was not cov­ered with tem­po­rary edi­fices, but now com­plet­ed to its full height, was to be adorned and part of the fes­ti­val as such. Poems writ­ten by Lunacharsky on each of the gables of the L‑shaped blocks are an essen­tial part of the mon­u­ment. Pho­tographs from the sec­ond anniver­sary of the rev­o­lu­tion and the unveil­ing of the mon­u­ment show that the texts were then paint­ed and carved in their cur­rent form lat­er.47 The texts are the same, but their lay­out on the gables and the typo­graph is live­li­er in the paint­ed versions—the height and size, shad­ow­ing, typog­ra­phy and spac­ing of lines vary­ing great­ly, where­as the carved poems have only some vari­a­tion in the height of lines. The paint­ed words dance in accor­dance with the rhythm of lan­guage and rhythm of move­ment, want­i­ng to be read aloud and per­ceived as part of a dynam­ic expe­ri­ence, not mere­ly as words carved in stone. They com­plete the mon­u­ment as an altar and a tribunal—a stage for com­mem­o­ra­tion, ora­tion and gath­er­ing of the crowds. They are an exam­ple of the way the ear­ly Sovi­et mon­u­ments sought to find a new syn­the­sis of arts and to func­tion on mul­ti­ple lev­els of con­vey­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas. In fact, it was a delib­er­ate part of Lenin’s Plan for Mon­u­men­tal Pro­pa­gan­da that such poet­ry and slo­gans writ­ten by con­tem­po­rary poets would be part of any mon­u­ment erect­ed as part of the plan as well as spread in the city on spe­cial plaques beyond mon­u­ments.48 The idea was broad­ly embraced by the artists and poets alike and the mon­u­ment here acts mere­ly as one exam­ple, albeit per­haps the most pow­er­ful. When Vladimir Mayakovsky famous­ly claimed on the front page of the jour­nal of the Left­ist artists Iskusst­vo Kom­muny (Art of the Com­mune) in ear­ly 1918 that ​“Streets are our brush­es / Squares our palettes”, it expressed the same ethos—to take the arts and put them into the use in the space of the city, take over and rede­fine the city with art.49

Sim­i­lar thoughts can be seen in the con­tem­po­rary actions of the Moscow Imag­in­ist poets to rename the streets of Moscow as an act of poet­ry or make mon­u­men­tal paint­ings on the walls of the old city,50 and across the cul­tur­al field at the time. What is essen­tial, is that through the active role of artis­tic and archi­tec­tur­al inter­ven­tions, the city not only becomes a site for invent­ing the past myths and his­to­ries of the rev­o­lu­tion, but also for defin­ing its mean­ing in the present and in the future, through both con­vinc­ing and feel­ing, through words and slo­gans as well as the­atre, per­for­mance and rit­u­als in-built in the form and idea of the monument.

Miraculously Modern

What then can we say about the for­mal and spa­tial pol­i­tics and poet­ics of a mon­u­ment, whose form on one hand seems to abide by the ideals of con­ser­v­a­tive preser­va­tion­ists dic­tat­ed by ambi­tion and vision of a clas­si­cal Peters­burg of bygone times, yet—as I have contended—serves as a cru­cial expres­sion of rev­o­lu­tion­ary dreams? What can we say about the agency and inten­tion of a mon­u­ment built dur­ing one regime and adopt­ed by anoth­er? The mon­u­ment, in short, seems clas­si­cal and acci­den­tal. At the same time, it clear­ly is ​“mod­ern” in the sense Mar­shall Berman defines as the com­mon ground of moder­ni­ty and its works of art as some­thing that are ​“moved at once by a will to change—to trans­form both them­selves and their world—and by a ter­ror of dis­ori­en­ta­tion and dis­in­te­gra­tion”.51 Not only ​“mod­ern,” but the mon­u­ment is ​“rev­o­lu­tion­ary” too, embody­ing the revolution’s myths and its dynam­ic and for­ward mov­ing nature. At the same time it is thor­ough­ly clas­si­cal with its form dic­tat­ed by the idioms and forms of the sur­round­ing impe­r­i­al city. I con­tend that instead of mak­ing it weak­er, this con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ter makes it stronger as a mon­u­ment to the rev­o­lu­tion. More­over, it is for these con­tra­dic­tions that it also so well can illu­mi­nate the his­to­ry of the Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tions and the for­mal and spa­tial impli­ca­tions of art relat­ed to them. After all, as Berman con­tin­ues to state, that ​“to be mod­ern is to live a life of para­dox and con­tra­dic­tion”. I believe that the mon­u­ment is a prime exam­ple of how moder­ni­ty unfold­ed in the imme­di­ate years fol­low­ing the rev­o­lu­tions of 1917 on the ​“native soil” of Peters­burg. It is, I con­tend, a vital expres­sion of rev­o­lu­tion­ary ambi­tions and myths in that its shape, form and mate­ri­al­i­ty, it sym­bol­i­cal­ly and overt­ly embod­ies and express­es the foun­da­tion­al myths of the rev­o­lu­tion, but also man­ages to offer a frame­work for build­ing towards a future rev­o­lu­tion­ary cul­ture and sub­ject still some­where in the future. It exem­pli­fies the many ways rethink­ing urban space through art and archi­tec­ture was an essen­tial process of mod­ern­iza­tion, and how this process of mod­ern­iza­tion was not by any means always tied to what has lat­er been titled ​“Mod­ernist” architecture.

Set­ting the mon­u­ment into the con­text of the debates on art that fol­lowed the fes­ti­val dec­o­ra­tions, as well as the mon­u­ments erect­ed as part of Lenin’s Plan for Mon­u­men­tal Pro­pa­gan­da, will illu­mi­nate this fur­ther. Writ­ing about the cel­e­bra­tions of the First of May in 1918 in the form of a debate between two fic­tion­al char­ac­ters the artist Dobuzhin­sky ironizes and sum­ma­rizes the debates between the ​“left” and ​“right” artists. In the sto­ry, a ​“left” artist directs his words against the ​“right’s” love of the city’s his­toric image: ​“there is now a rebel­lion in art too against the hyp­not­ic idea of ​“aus­tere har­mo­ny” that has been so adored and extolled by poets and artists before us,” some­thing against which the ​“left”, now with its inter­rup­tive and dynam­ic dec­o­ra­tions, has ​“dropped a bomb”. To this the ​“right” artist replies that the archi­tec­ture is stronger and can stand against such action of ​“ran­dom­ly stick­ing up patch­es and plas­ters” and dis­miss­es the bomb mere­ly as ​“a frog attack­ing an ox!”.52 Rudnev’s mon­u­ment, by tak­ing its form from the ​“aus­tere har­mo­ny” of the sur­round­ing city rep­re­sents exact­ly what the ​“right” wanted—it inten­si­fied and reit­er­at­ed the mon­u­men­tal­i­ty of the city to this new era. But, on the oth­er hand, it comes close to some of the atti­tudes and ideas of the ​“left”. Even if its form on the out­side did not inter­rupt the visu­al idiom of the sur­round­ing city, yet, through oth­er for­mal, spa­tial and sym­bol­ic means, still dis­man­tle and recon­struct the space and mean­ings of the city. Look­ing at anoth­er piece com­ment­ing on the Plan for Mon­u­men­tal Pro­pa­gan­da helps to under­stand this. In an arti­cle pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 1919 and titled ​“Mon­u­ments Not Made by Human Hands” (nerukotvorni’e mon­u­men­ti’) the impor­tant fig­ure of the ​“left” arts Kaz­imir Male­vich attacks the fig­u­ra­tive sculp­tures and mon­u­ments built as part of the plan. Male­vich writes that instead of sim­ply con­vey­ing a like­ness of the fig­ures, the mon­u­ments should aim to con­vey the sys­tems of thought and the lives of those fig­ures. 53 For Male­vich, ​“before the sculp­tor lies a sys­tem which must be turned into a mon­u­ment”.54 In fact, this seems to be, in more than one way, exact­ly what Rudnev’s mon­u­ment does. Instead of impos­ing a hero or a fig­ure, it offers a foun­da­tion, strong in itself and its sym­bol­ism, but most of all strong in encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing the con­tem­po­rary rev­o­lu­tion­ary life. Through abstrac­tion, open ges­tures and appro­pri­a­tion, it turns the past into a poten­tial for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary future. Rather than impos­ing a body of a sin­gu­lar hero in the form of a stat­ue, it makes space for the body of the col­lec­tive, express­ing a sys­tem of val­ues through spa­tial and for­mal ges­tures just like Male­vich calls for. It does not enclose space with its pres­ence, it seeks to re-define an open space meant to be filled with the pres­ence of people. 

The space it marks with­in itself forms a dis­tinc­tive space, ele­vat­ed by the mon­u­ment into some­thing extra­or­di­nary: an altar, a tri­bunal, a sacred space, a stage of the rev­o­lu­tion delin­eat­ed by the mon­u­ment. This form is strength­ened by the sym­bol­ism relat­ed to the stones and to the site itself as the graves of the heroes of the rev­o­lu­tion and the idea of it as a col­lec­tive effort, which also res­onates with the title of Malevich’s arti­cle. Male­vich used the term ​“nerukotvorni’y” as a deroga­to­ry term,55 but writ­ten in quo­ta­tion marks, and giv­en Malevich’s often ambigu­ous use of lan­guage and his ten­den­cy towards a cer­tain kind of mys­ti­cism, it also invites anoth­er con­no­ta­tion to the so called ​“acheiropoi­eta”, or a tra­di­tion of mirac­u­lous icons not made by human hand, and like the stat­ues he crit­i­cizes, often copied after one anoth­er. The idea of a the mirac­u­lous sys­tem of ​“archeiropoei­ta” also seems to strong­ly res­onate with Malevich’s ideas of mon­u­ments as con­vey­ors of sys­tems of belief them­selves man­i­fest­ing through a par­tic­u­lar sys­tem of art, which, like he writes, should leave ​“no place for any­thing inter­nal or indi­vid­ual,” no expla­na­tions of this is how ​“I under­stood” the task.56 Fur­ther­more, these ideas strong­ly res­onate with and obtain anoth­er, thor­ough­ly mod­ern trans­la­tion in the idea of the Mon­u­ment to the Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion as the mir­a­cle of god is replaced by a mir­a­cle of a col­lec­tive effort. Behind the form of the mon­u­ment lies a sys­tem which rethinks the clas­si­cal idiom. Thus, the mon­u­ment, in both form and mean­ing sym­bol­i­cal­ly, and through active spa­tial ges­tures, embod­ies the revolution’s myths and ideals and util­is­ing rein­vent­ed clas­si­cal idioms trans­lates them into archi­tec­tur­al form and into the space of the city. Through its form it repli­cat­ed and enforced the mes­sage of the revolution’s ideals while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mak­ing room for the actions that served to fur­ther define rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­tics and real­i­ty. Through a new for­mal sys­tem the mon­u­ment reflects and embod­ies a par­al­lel sys­tem of val­ues and beliefs, ​“now turned to con­tem­po­rary lived life” just as Male­vich called for.57 The sim­i­lar­i­ties of Male­vich and Rud­nev don’t sole­ly remain in the ideas of a new kind of mon­u­ment that ele­vates life itself on the pedestal instead of images of heroes, but the sim­pli­fied form of Rudnev’s mon­u­ment, and its attempt to estab­lish a new order, also bears a sim­i­lar­i­ty to Malevich’s archi­tec­tur­al exper­i­ments, which sim­i­lar­ly sought to cre­ate a ​“new order” for archi­tec­ture based on abstract, pla­ton­ic forms. There is no record­ed inter­ac­tion between Male­vich and Rud­nev, although they undoubt­ed­ly were aware of each oth­er, and com­ing from the very dif­fer­ent sides of the artis­tic field, opposed to one anoth­ers’ views.58 But rather than a ques­tion of influ­ence, it serves as evi­dence that sim­i­lar process­es of moder­ni­ty were unfold­ing through mon­u­ments of both ​“clas­si­cal” and ​“Mod­ernist” for­mal means; sim­i­lar rev­o­lu­tion­ary mech­a­nisms can be seen at play behind and beyond the for­mal means of expres­sion themselves.

The sto­ry of the mon­u­ment con­tin­ues beyond the first years of the rev­o­lu­tion cov­ered in this arti­cle. Half-a-year after its unveil­ing, dur­ing the first Sovi­et ​“subbotnik”—a vol­un­tary Sat­ur­day of work—sixty thou­sand plants were plant­ed on the square sur­round­ing it by thou­sands of vol­un­teers com­plet­ing the Field of Mars as a park, and once again reveal­ing the per­for­ma­tive and mirac­u­lous pow­er of the col­lec­tive.59 The design of the park, done by Ivan Fomin, is a com­bi­na­tion of clas­si­cal rigid­i­ty emu­lat­ing the form of the city around it, but notably, the wider path­ways that break its sym­me­try fol­low exact­ly the light green water colour line on Rudnev’s designs for the fes­tive cel­e­bra­tions, and make the facil­i­tat­ing of the col­lec­tive body a clear­ly vis­i­ble aspect of the design. In this com­plet­ed form the site con­tin­ued to serve as the ​“altar of the rev­o­lu­tion” and the site for rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­tiv­i­ties for decades to come. It also became one of the icon­ic sites and emblems of the city, repro­duced in numer­ous post­cards and books on the city. The prin­ci­ples it estab­lished with its rein­vent­ed clas­si­cism used to make space for the col­lec­tive body of work­ers had long-last­ing impacts as sim­i­lar approach can be seen repeat­ed in numer­ous Sovi­et mon­u­ments that fol­lowed it. More­over, it has here revealed unex­pect­ed sim­i­lar­i­ties between ​“clas­si­cal” and ​“Mod­ernist” inter­ven­tions in the city. Even if dif­fer­ent in their visu­al idiom, dur­ing the ear­ly peri­od fol­low­ing the Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion, the idea of archi­tec­tur­al and artis­tic form as an active facil­i­ta­tor between the city and the new­ly empow­ered col­lec­tive body of the work­ers, was at the heart of rethink­ing the city. Art and archi­tec­ture active­ly took part in artic­u­lat­ing and con­struct­ing the myths of the rev­o­lu­tion, forg­ing shared ground for a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary cul­ture and sub­ject to come. This often took place when look­ing for new kinds of syn­the­sis in the space of the city, join­ing through lines on paper—whether lines of verse or designs for action or mon­u­ments —trans­lat­ed and mate­ri­al­ized into inscrip­tions on the ground and in stone, made stronger through the lines of action that they play a part in. 

The pur­pose of this arti­cle has been to show that Rudnev’s mon­u­ment rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar kind of rev­o­lu­tion­ary moder­ni­ty borne upon the soil of Peters­burg dur­ing times of rev­o­lu­tion. The mon­u­ment draws a line on the square reded­i­cat­ing it and mak­ing space to the col­lec­tive body of the work­ers. This reflects and repli­cates the hor­i­zon­tal­i­ty of the sur­round­ing city, but low­ers the cor­nice into a ped­i­ment, form­ing a foun­da­tion for anoth­er future. It marks a space with­in, a space for ora­tion, a space for per­for­mance, and charges the sur­round­ing space, trans­form­ing it into space for any­one. It’s sim­ple but severe form re-cal­i­brat­ed the rela­tion­ship of the city’s forms with its peo­ple, mod­ern­ized it, rev­o­lu­tion­ized it, turned it inside out, abstract­ing and dis­man­tling the myths and pow­er relat­ed to it through its idea and form. If the clas­si­cal form of the city once turned the passers-by into shad­ows, now, appro­pri­at­ed, reded­i­cat­ed and rein­vent­ed, the strong hor­i­zon­tal lines instead make them seen, heard and felt, giv­ing them a body with weight, turn­ing those who were noth­ing into those who were everything.