Mikhail Ryklin 
The Collapse of the Statues 
or What Can & What Cannot Be Buried? 
The Soviet Union provides an example of a state that, for more than 
seventy years, carried out a distinct policy of representation, i.e. it controlled 
and decorated public spaces according to a plan. Initially, Lenin signed the 
decree »On the Monumen t s of the Republic« on April 12, 1918. It is not 
accidental that the founder of the first socialist state valued monumental propa-
ganda so much - more than 80% of the population was at the time illiterate, 
so that, along with cinema, monuments seemed crucial for the reeducation of 
the masses in a new socialist spirit. 
In the thirties, unde r Stalin, monumenta l propaganda acquired a more 
illusionary dimension, especially with the Palace of the Soviets, which was 
supposed to have been built near the Kremlin and to surpass it in its size and 
decor. It was so huge that the architects failed to build it. Instead, seven sky-
scrapers were erected in Moscow after the war which still dominate the city 
and remind us of the unfulfi l led dream of communism. 
Filozofski vestnik, XVII (2/1996), pp. 127-139. 
Mikhail Ryklin 
Throughout Soviet rule, there existed a list of leaders whose images 
were first to be immortalized by well-known sculptors and then copied and 
dispersed (in replicas) all over the country. Lenin invariably remained at the 
top of the list. Stalin also remained number one for about thirty years fol-
lowed by Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Frunze and other other, 
less distinquished personalities. Each new reign, up to Gorbachev's , was, as a 
rule, accompanied by the destruction of monuments honour ing the immedi-
ate predecessor as well as the whole visual and literary archive, including 
books, albums, etc. It happened to Stalin and his condemned comrades un-
der Khrushchev. At the beginning of the Brezhnev era Khrushchev shared 
the same fate. 
It seems that Soviet society aspired more to oblivion than to memory, 
scrapping most of its monuments instead of storing them, like many other 
societies do. I vividly remember how, in the early sixties, in the Crimea, I 
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witnessed as a chi ld the »execut ion« of a Stalin statue: a bul ldozer pul led up 
and ins tant ly it d ragged the fo rmer god away, a hoop over its neck. 
So, the re was a k ind of cont inui ty in what took place in Moscow in 
August 1991, af ter the coup d'etathad failed, that is in the demoli t ion of the 
statues which were t opp led f r o m their pedestals . The difference, however , 
should no t be u n d e r e s t i m a t e d because this t ime it was the crowd that re-
sor ted to the acts of v io lence against the m o n u m e n t s wi thout any instructions 
f r o m above . 
I c a n n o t resist the t empta t ion to quote a passage f r o m an essay of mine 
wri t ten the nex t day af ter the coup-. 
A secure old age was certainly not to be the destiny of many Stalin-era 
statues. Those who were in downtown Moscow on August 22, 1991, could 
witness agitated iconoclasts chipping pieces off the pedestals of the over-
thrown monuments to Dzerzhinsky and Sverdlov, throngs of people posing 
at the feet of former citadels. 
Those were the days of the downfall of statues. The goal of the crowd that 
attacked the statued was clear; to allow the totalitarian spaces of Moscow to 
acquire a new aestetic status, to become, irreversibly, spaces of exposition. 
Unsuccessful »rainmakers« during a drought, these idols were humiliated, 
knocked down and secretly dumped up in the backyard of some garage. 
Destruction, as we know, is the highest form of worship; it is not just an 
expression of moral illiteracy but of an unresolved feeling of guilt spilling 
out and clamoring for immediate victims. 
On Dzerzhinsky Square without Dzerzhinsky and on Sverdlov Square with-
out Sverdlov, I physically sensed that now, from this moment on, every one 
of us had become an agent of terror. The internalisation of guilt was com-
plete; that is why the crowd itself assumed repressive functions. On the 
empty pedestals reigned the final, non-anthropomorphic referent of Terror, 
the people itself. 
The Sverdlov monument was the hang-out for the the mute. In total silence, 
the mutes had climbed onto the pillar and chipped off chunks of stone. The 
crowbars sent sparks flying. 
The exultation was chilling. (Ryklin 1992:49) 
Af te r the events of Augus t 1991 an internat ional t eam of artists inspired 
by the New-York -based f o u n d e r s of Sots-art Komar & Melamid , came up 
with the idea of t empora r i ly t r ans forming Moscow, or at least a section of it, 
in to a »garden of total i tar ian sculpture«. It would have given the artists the 
possibil i ty of tu rn ing the sculptures into a kind of history lesson, pe r fo rming 
on them, for ins tance, tu rn ing them upside down, pa in t ing on their surface, 
enac t ing their des t ruc t ion and so on. In fact, artists were urged to »behave 
like angels« wi thou t be ing such. T h e question that natural ly arises is as fol-
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lows: are we sufficiently r emoved f r o m the age of T e r r o r to play innocen t ly 
with its referents? Is it not an obvious narcissistic a t t i tude tha t ho lds the artists 
within the confines of the imaginary? 
These doubts are just if ied and sha red by m a n y ar t h is tor ians . Let m e 
make re fe rence to one of them, F.S. Licht : 
On the face of it, the idea is admirable. It neutralizes the monuments poten-
tially damaging propaganda while salvaging the monuments' themselves, 
conferring on them an archival status. It also produces a spate of new works. 
And yet there remains a nagging doubt: is emasculation by aestheticisation 
as defensible as it seems to be?... Can we justify our right to deal with the 
monuments of a past epoch in such a high-handed manner? Are we suffi-
ciently free of fanaticisms, of the hypocrisies and manipulatory strategies 
that lie behind the monuments to point an accusing finger?... Monuments 
have behind them impulses of generosity that cannot be utterly discounted... 
(Licht 1995:55) 
The re is another p rob l em that r ema ins un reso lved , thus m a k i n g any 
possible »garden of totalitarian sculpture« despera te ly incomple te . I have in 
mind the fact that at the very top of the Soviet h i e ra rchy of s tone, b r o n z e and 
marb le m o n u m e n t s , indeed c rowning them, there is a m u m m y , the »undead« 
body of Lenin, and this » m o n u m e n t of m o n u m e n t s « , p rov id ing for t hem their 
very possibility, still lies in the M a u s o l e u m in the R e d Square . It is there 
despite the fact that since 1991 the D a m o c l e s ' sword of des t ruc t ion has b e e n 
hanging over it (or, if one prefers, he) too. 
K o m a r and Melamid themselves do no t even d o u b t the key i m p o r t a n c e 
of the m u m m y ; in their letter to the Pres iden t of Russ ia they playful ly pro-
pose to incorpora te it in their project : 
For us, the most important monument is Lenin's mausoleum. We propose 
adding a mere three letters - 'ISM' - to the leader's name. So doing, we 
would save this 20-century masterpiece and transform it into a symbolic 
grave of Leninist theory and practice. Perhaps pink flamingos could be al-
lowed to wander about the tribunal from which the leaders greeted people 
on the state holidays. (Komar & Melamid 1995:5) 
They are not the only ones w h o bel ieve in the crucial role of Len in ' s 
body for the whole mytho logy of c o m m u n i s m . S o m e emphas i ze it even m o r e 
strongly. V . Todorov , for example , writes: 
Although justified by science, pre-planned and pre-rationalized, commu-
nism had to be authorized by allegorical images, visions, ceremonies, monu-
ments. In its center was laid the mummy of the leader...The mummy is the 
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materialized spectre of communism which advertises its imaginary space; it 
is its real political body. If the teaching of the leader is the rational motive of 
communism then his corpse is its irrational one. Thus communism trans-
formed both the rational and the irrational into a political mode of life, 
where both coincide. (Todorov 1993:252-253) 
If we earnes t ly accept these statements, they will force us to recognize 
that while Len in ' s dead b o d y remains where it was, c o m m u n i s m is still in its 
p lace , even t h o u g h less essential communis t insignia h a d unde rgone destruc-
t ion. It m e a n s tha t we are no t al lowed to »behave like angels« in relation to 
the mater ia l r e m n a n t s of the past. Try ing to »behave like angels«, engaging 
ourselves in a p layful demol i t ion of the left-overs of the previous per iod of 
his tory, we do n o t h i n g else bu t r ep roduce the vicious circle of violence inher-
i ted f r o m it. 
In o ther words , the t ime is not yet r ipe for »the garden of totalitarian 
sculpture« to be c rea ted in Moscow. Al though rumors constant ly circulate in 
the Russ ian press abou t the neccessity of bury ing Lenin like a Christ ian and 
the leader himself is quo ted as having said that he would like to be bur ied 
nea r his m o t h e r ' s t omb , the m u m m y is still in its shrine and one cannot say 
w h e t h e r c o m m u n i s m , like Kafka ' s hunter Grachus , is alive or dead. At least 
its defini t ive, its final bur ia l is constantly ad journed until a later t ime which 
fails to come. 
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Mikhail Ryklin 
I do no t share the view of those w h o be l ieve that , once Len in ' s m u m m i -
fied corpse finds its last abode, eve ry th ing else will au tomat ica l ly change , 
and the transi t ion will be seen as comple t ed . M o r e o v e r , n o t h i n g will change 
before we change ourselves enough to let »the d e a d b u r y their dead« wi thou t 
disturbing our lives to the present extent . 
In his book on Marx J acques D e r r i d a uses the w o r d »hantologie« to de-
f ine la science des revenants, the science of p h a n t o m s , ghosts , shadows and o ther 
ephemera l p h e n o m e n a whose main p r o p e r t y is to haun t , r e t u r n i n g f r o m be-
y o n d the grave . »Good« ghosts m a y at any m o m e n t b e c o m e »bad« ones , as 
has recent ly h a p p e n e d to Lenin. 
But statues are not ghosts, they are ne i the r g o o d nor bad , ins tead, if we 
do not i m b u e them with our own pa thos , they are neut ra l . T h e capaci ty to 
become exci ted by them belongs to us and no t to t h e m . O n c e we recognize 
them as neutral witnesses and learn to b e a r their g lance, they will b e c o m e 
complete ly harmless , devoid of ei ther »impulses of generos i ty« or »natural 
depravity«. W h a t has b rough t t hem to life is one thing, whereas statues are 
quite another . They have no th ing to do with the bi t ter fact tha t s o m e b o d y ' s 
past has not yet tu rned into »past perfect«, un fait accompli. A witty p e r s o n 
once r e m a r k e d that thef t is the best c o m p l i m e n t one can pay to a th ing: in 
m u c h the same way demol i t ion is the bes t dec la ra t ion of love, d e p e n d e n c e 
and guilt in relation to things demol i shed . This u rge is roo ted in us, it is no t 
theirs, and the only cure is s imply to b e c o m e aware of the logic of the situa-
tion. 
In the final account , m o n u m e n t s b e l o n g to an i m m e n s e fami ly of neu-
tral m n e m o n i c traces and in that capaci ty they can be arbi t rar i ly ascr ibed the 
qualities of be ing ei ther revo lu t ionary or r eac t i ona ry ( d e p e n d i n g on w h o 
judges). But glorified or debased, in due t ime they start to r e semble each 
other . Some believe that democracy is in p r inc ip le i n c o m p a t i b l e wi th m o n u -
menta l c o m m e m o r a t i o n s but that does n o t p r e v e n t democrac i e s f r o m erect-
ing m o n u m e n t s . If we single out m o n u m e n t s separa t ing t h e m - as self-con-
tained entities - f rom other traces, we shall be at a loss th ink ing of h o w to get 
rid of them: 
...we cannot but deplore the monumental mode. Yet much as we hate, fear 
or mock monuments, it seems we cannot do without them...we inadvert-
ently erect monuments of our own. (Licht 1995:57) 
If we conceive m o n u m e n t s as u n a v o i d a b l e traces, it will m a k e little sense 
to say »all m o n u m e n t s are react ionary« or »by def in i t ion they are against 
revolut ionary aspirations« or, on the cont rary , »they cont r ibu te to the progress 
of humani ty« . 
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Mikhail Ryklin 
Traces are by nature different f rom the manner in which they may be 
defined, they repeat themselves before any definition whatsoever and are 
still interchangeable within it. 
However, revenons a nos moutons. Russian politicians do not pay much 
attention to the monuments of the Soviet epoch. Some of them remain where 
they were, others have either ceased to exist or are kept in storage spaces. 
Any comparison with nazi symbols does not hold true, for communism suf-
fered no military defeat with its habitual consequence - a formal prohibit ion 
on the part of the winners on the display of the symbols of the conquered 
enemy. In our case the Russian people has to cope all by itself with its posi-
tive and negative memories, its reactions ranging f rom adoration to destruc-
tion, from »joyful irresponsibility« to evident figures of guilt. It happens some-
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The Collapse of the Statues . 
t imes that statues are invo lved in this process as hostages, witnesses or in 
some o ther similar capaci ty . 
T h e si tuat ion is m u c h like the one f r o m a story told by Walter Benjamin 
in Theses on the Philosophy of History. W h a t I have in mind is the opening story 
abou t an a u t o m a t o n that neve r lost a single game of chess. But the real player 
was h i d d e n b e h i n d »a system of mirrors« and »guided the puppet's hand by means 
of strings« (Benjamin 1969:253). It was »a little hunchback (Zwerg)« who re-
s p o n d e d to each of his o p p o n e n t ' s moves with a coun te rmove . Benjamin 
con t inues : 
One can imagine a philosophical counterpart of this device. The puppet 
called 'historical materialism' is to win all the time. 
(Benjamin 1969:253) 
F r o m his M o s c o w tr ip in 1926-1927 Ben jamin knew what kind of game 
was p l ayed b e h i n d the screen unde r the n a m e of historical material ism and 
whose pe r sona l interest was a factor in t ransforming privi leged »little hunch-
backs« into a neutra l »system of mirrors« posing as automatic historical neccessity. 
F r o m 1991 on, since the t ime the USSR enacted its own disappearance, it has 
b e c o m e clear tha t it was no t a material ist au tomaton constant ly winning, but 
that dwarfs or h u n c h b a c k s gu ided its lucky hand . Hav ing destroyed the »sys-
tem of mirrors creating the illusion that the table was transparent from all sides« 
(Benjamin 1969:253) they e m e r g e d - well, not as fo rmer hunchbacks , but as 
... exper t s in a n e w g a m e of capitalism. They are the first to hate the dirty 
tricks that p e r m i t t e d old h u n c h b a c k s to win; they are l ead ing others to a new, 
no less rad ian t fu ture , the out l ines of which are already discernible beh ind a 
new system of mi r ro r s tha t is c la imed to ensure true t ransparency, this t ime 
wi thou t dece iv ing anyone . A n d it is hard to p rove that these characters are 
the same »little h u n c h b a c k s « f rom Benjamin ' s tale, for n o b o d y saw them 
e m e r g i n g f r o m b e h i n d »a puppet in Turkish attire« as c landest ine chess play-
ers. As for the f o r m e r system of mirrors, they tell everyone that it b e c a m e quite 
ro t ten na tura l ly t h rough expec t ing one good kick to collapse. They them-
selves, of course, were the those who gave the first kick. 
These are just wel l -known ruses on the par t of those who want to cross 
out their past . W h a n is real ly impor tan t is the fact that the little old hunch-
back did no t lose a single g a m e of chess to the other, m o r e exper t player. H e 
lost at best to historical neccessi ty, the nature of which remains to be def ined. 
T h e idea of »a ga rden of total i tarian sculpture« (considered by both the 
M o s c o w author i t ies and in te rna t iona l artists in 1992-1993) has yet another 
d rawback : it encompasses a small group of elite Moscow m o n u m e n t s , a kind 
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Mikhail Ryklin 
of statuesque nomenklatura, made of bronze and marble they were meant to 
last for centuries. But during more than seventy years of its existence monu-
mental propaganda has produced millions of such statues, busts, mosaics and 
bas-reliefs. In most cases their destruction is not ideologically motivated and 
results from bad climatic conditions, spontaneous acts of barbarism on the 
part of the local populace (made mostly of clay and plaster, they are easily 
destroyed) and a whole range of other unpredictable circumstances includ-
ing natural decay. They seal the fate of the socialist visual archive in a way 
that no articulated position or deliberately chosen attitude does. 
There are artists who try to document the process of decay at the grass-
roots level travelling all over the country. A vivid example of a modest and 
yet essential effort of the kind is provided by the Moscow photographer Igor 
Mukhin whose extensive project known as »Empty spaces« carried out persist-
ently for several years (since the late eighties) aims at preserving the remain-
ing traces of what used to be one of the biggest plastic archives on Earth. He 
collected a considerable body of evidence testifying to the actual state of the 
archive and dismissed a largely shared illusion that what really matters is 
nothing but Lenin's mummy and a number of related monuments . 
Another of Mukhin's discoveries is the mainly apolitical nature of de-
cay, as distinguished from deliberate destruction or decreed demolition. Mil-
lions of gypsum young pioneers with drums or t rumpets and girls with oars 
simply decompose in parks, squares and elsewhere because of the lack of 
public interest, poor maintenance etc. It does not matter in whose honour 
they were erected; Pushkin, the eternal favorite of the Russian public, equally 
praised by Dostoevsky and by Zhdanov, is sharing now the fate of numerous 
Gorkys, Unknown Soldiers and Mother land images of. Hardships currently 
suffered by the people make them indifferent to the remnants of the past; as 
for the State, it is notorious for its lack of resources and inability to cover even 
the basic needs. 
Most of my compatriots possess a superficial impression of living in 
such a hurry that they simply have no time for the rites of mourning. Per-
haps, however, they live like that precisely because of a constant mourning, 
so deep and suppressed in them that they simply cannot allow themselves to 
notice it? They suffer badly from »thepresent moment« perceived and described 
by most of them as something unheard - of and unique. 
But they are mistaken. Benjamin once remarked that the lower classes 
permanently live in a state of emergency which is the only etat de la nature 
known to them. In this respect Russian history is hopelessly repetitious. 
In his Russian Journal J o h n Steinbeck recalls a game that was popular 
among the American journalists in Moscow in the late forties: somebody 
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read out a text declaring, for instance, that Russians were afraid to meet for-
eigners because they were constantly watched after by the police, that they 
»refused to answer any questions on their life« and so on. But how, exclaimed 
a correspondent , evidently a new-comer, are you hoping to get it through the 
censorship, you will simply not be allowed! A burst of general laughter fol-
lowed, for the text in question happened to be written in the 17-th century 
by, say, a Dutch merchant or an Italian ambassador. 
The vicious circle of the same, of what is supposed to be the same seems 
to give memory no chance, it erases, deletes everything as always-already 
having taken place. The inscription automatically becomes a palimpsest and 
is doomed to fall victim to the next inscription and so on. Or, to put it differ-
ently, too much of a presence creates a gap, an enormous absence under the 
dictatorship of »present moment«. 
Can one be a historian of the potential? The answer to this question is 
crucial for everyone who studies the archives of the Revolution or of other no 
less violent events. For it may happen that archives contain more blanks than 
information, and who can guarantee that what one takes for information has 
not been many times sifted, rareified, if not indeed annuled? The notion of a 
zero archive does not at all seem too extravagant with respect to such events. 
The question then would be: how does one deal with proteic beings who 
regularly suppress their past? 
By being a witnesses to an absence, to the loss of memory (mostly an 
ontological loss that does not involve oblivion or forgetfulness, but is, per-
haps, the only form of survival for catastrophic events). By memorizing the 
immemorial , by reading texts that were written in order not to leave traces, 
being such traces themselves. By reading them, so to say, against the grain, a 
rebours. Then we shall probably see how the revolutionary arches transform 
themselves into traces, strange ones, no doubt, but still traces, belonging to a 
whole family. 
Gathering traces is not the same thing as taking a stance or systemati-
cally explaining something. Benjamin's »Moscow Diary« is itself the best ex-
ample of how to assemble traces without providing their systematic explana-
tion or, in other words, a theory. From the very beginning of his stay in 
Moscow, then the epicenter of the Great Revolution, he keeps repeating that 
»the present moment« here is so charged with unpredictable possibilities that 
an outsider must refrain f rom judging. Several times he calls Moscow »an 
impregnable fortress« and, unable to pass a verdict, confines himself to the 
closest possible observation. Here is a quotation from his letter to his friend, 
sculptress Ju la Radt, sent to her from Moscow: 
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Mikhail Ryklin 
I cannot assess all of this; basically, the situation here enables and requires 
one to take on a position within it ... from an outside, all you can do is 
observe it. It is totally impossible to predict what's going to come of all this 
in Russia. Perhaps a truly socialist community, perhaps something entirely 
different. The battle that is going to decide this is still in progress. (Benjamin 
1985:127) 
This passage draws a dist inction be tween col lect ing t races (Benjamin 
himself was a collector, and the list of things he b o u g h t in Moscow, most ly 
hand -made objects, is truly impressive) , obse rv ing things f r o m the outs ide 
and taking a posi t ion or theor iz ing the s i tuat ion that he d e e m s f u n d a m e n t a l l y 
uncertain bo th f rom within and f r o m wi thout . As D e r r i d a r e m a r k s in his text 
Back from Moscow, in the USSR wri t ten in 1990 af ter his first voyage to Mos-
cow, the »phenomenologica l motive« in the »Moscow Diary« is i n sepa rab l e 
f rom the fact that here , in this par t icular p lace , i.e. in pos t revo lu t ionary Mos-
cow, each fact is always-already a t heo ry (Derr ida 1995:74-75). A he rme-
neutics, as it is pract iced elsewhere, is always b locked he re by the pr ivi lege of 
»the presen t moment« , un ique to the degree of b e c o m i n g total ly unc lea r and 
thus undec ipherab le . P h e n o m e n a b r o u g h t in to b e i n g by the Revo lu t ion are 
too ex t reme to be seized by no rma l m e a n s . 
Despi te such facts as Benjamin ' s u n f o r t u n a t e love, his u n b o r n child and 
the unfulf i l led revolut ionary promise , D e r r i d a insists on the i r reduc ib le na-
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The Collapse of the Statues . 
ture of his Diary as a collection of traces in its own right. This text along with 
other texts is the only remnant and survivor of his stay at the epicentre of the 
World Revolution (Derrida 1995:74-94). 
I took this example in order to show that the uniqueness of »the present 
moment« is a recurrent theme in Russian history, so that we should not enter-
tain any illusions concerning the epistemological privilege of our own present 
moment and the status of some »unheard-of« that we arbitrarily ascribe to it. 
By doing so we simply rationalize our traumas. 
For this is the main reason why, not without some hesitation, Derrida 
finally refused to equate perestroyka (which almost literally means »decon-
struction«) with deconstruction proper: perestroyka is a promise postponed 
until some more or less remote and hazy »after«, it is imbued with potential-
ity, it points to still another kind of radiant future, whereas deconstruction 
deals with traces of something that has already happened, that has definitely 
taken place. The combination »presence-absence«, with inevitable reversibil-
ity it entails, cannot directly be applied to traces that are irreversibly there. 
Nothing is more human than our desire to go beyond traces, nothing is less 
possible than that. 
References 
Benjamin, W., Illuminations, Schoken Books, New York 1969. 
Benjamin, W., »Moscow Diary«, October, No. 35, 1985. 
Derrida, J. , Moscou aller-retour, Editions de l'Aube, Marseille 1995. 
Komar & Melamid, 'm Monumental Propaganda, Independent Curators Inc., New 
York 1995. 
Licht, F.S., in Monumental Propaganda, Independent Curators Inc., New York 
1995. 
Ryklin, M., »Downfall of the Statues«, in Afrika, Fisher Gallery, Los Angeles 
1992. 
Todorov V., »Introduction into the Physiognomy of Ruins«, The Yale Journal of 
Criticism, Spring 1993, Vol. 6, No. 1. 
All photos are f rom Igor Mukhin's project »Empty Spaces«. 
139