Monument to Alexander 3 in St. Petersburg
The most important merit of Emperor Alexander III (1845 - 1894) is that during all the years of his reign Russia did not wage wars; to this day he remains the only ruler of our state, since the 9th century, during which there was not a single war. For this he received his nickname "Peacemaker". Another significant achievement of the Emperor is the founding of the Great Siberian Railway from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
Address:
Marble Palace, Millionnaya St., 5/1
On November 25, 1899, the Ministry of Finance announced a competition to create a monument to Emperor Alexander III, the Sovereign founder of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The construction of the road was supposed to be completed in 1902, and the opening of the monument on Znamenskaya Square (now Vosstaniya Square), in front of the Nikolaevsky (now Moskovsky) station building, was planned to coincide with the same year. The customers of the monument were Emperor Nicholas II and members of the royal family.
Preference was given to the project of the Italian sculptor P.P. Trubetskoy - the son of Prince P.I. Trubetskoy, who served in the Russian embassy in Florence, and the American Ada Vinas. Arriving in Russia in 1897 - 1906, Paolo Trubetskoy became one of the founding members of the World of Art society. He himself, as a sculptor, created several monuments: to L. Tolstoy and A.S. Pushkin, but became famous precisely for the creation of the monument to Alexander III. P. Trubetskoy was the first and most consistent representative of the direction of impressionism in sculpture.
To work on the monument, a special workshop-pavilion made of glass and iron was built on Staro-Nevsky Prospect, not far from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In the preparatory stage, which lasted eight years, Trubetskoy created eight small-sized models, four life-size and two on the scale of the monument itself.
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich saw “Trubetskoy’s model as a caricature of his brother.” However, the Dowager Empress found the portrait resemblance of the sculpture quite pronounced and contributed to the completion of work on the monument. For the figure of the horseman, Trubetskoy was posed by the sergeant major of the palace department, P. Pustov, who has a great resemblance to the Emperor. The model of the horse was Alexander III’s own horse. The Emperor’s Horse. Alexandra III.1909
According to the original idea, plot bas-reliefs depicting the conquest of Siberia by Ermak and the meeting of the first railway train by the inhabitants of Siberia were to be placed on the sides of the pedestal. But later the sculptor abandoned them.
The casting of the monument was carried out in St. Petersburg by the Italian foundry master E. Sperati, specially invited from Turin. The monument was converted into bronze in parts: the figure of the Emperor - in the workshop of the foundry worker K. Robecki, and the figure of the horse - at the Obukhov steel plant.
The pedestal, more than three measures in height, was made of Valaam red granite, according to the design of the architect F.O. Shekhtel. On the front side of the pedestal there was an inscription: “TO THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER III, THE SOVEREIGN FOUNDER OF THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROUTE.”
A complex foundation was created for the monument on Znamenskaya Square. The creation of a bronze monument to Alexander III cost the treasury 1,200,000 rubles.
On May 23 (June 5, New Style), 1909, the monument was consecrated and inaugurated. Emperor Nicholas II attended the ceremony. The service was led by Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky). At the request of Alexander III’s son, Emperor Nicholas II, an inscription was created on the pedestal: “Loving son to beloved father.”
Opinions about the monument were very controversial.
There was an opinion in the city that the monument to Alexander III was supposed to be erected in the Ural Mountains, on the border of Europe and Asia, and that is why it was created so massive and heavy. It was believed that the monument would be viewed from the windows of a speeding train, from a great distance, so that the massiveness of the statue would not be so noticeable.
During his lifetime, Emperor Alexander III was distinguished by his remarkable physical strength and gigantic height: 193 cm. He broke coins and bent horseshoes with his bare hands, and over the years he became even more stocky and bulky. S.Yu. Witte wrote about him: “In appearance he looked like a big Russian peasant from the central provinces; a suit would suit him best: a sheepskin coat, a jacket and bast shoes.”
V.V. Rozanov in his article “Paolo Trubezkoi and his monument to Alexander III” describes the impression of the monument as follows: “The horse rested... The head is stubborn and stupid. My hair almost sticks out like a hedgehog. The horse does not understand where he is being pushed. And he doesn’t want to go anywhere. The horse is a terrible liberal: his head is neither back, nor forward, nor to the side. “Give me reform, without it I won’t move.” - “There will be a reform for you!”... It hurts the horse: the mouthpiece terribly spread out the mouth, the lower jaw is almost at a right angle to the line of the head. <...> the horse's head is stubborn and ingenious, “like all of us,” “like Rus',” like “our intelligentsia.” - "Let me into the light!" But there is no tail, this clever girl’s tail has been eaten off. Between the tail - or, better to say, the “lack of a tail” - and the angry, grinning head there is a huge body with barrels, with legs, with an abdomen, the likes of which absolutely no horse has, and Trubetskoy... clearly it was not a horse that was drawn, but a devil knows what! “Inspiration”, unconsciousness!.. That’s exactly what was needed: well, what a “horse” Russia is - a pig, not a horse. <...> Trubetskoy <...> put a stubborn, angry, almost donkey's head ("rested down like a donkey") on a huge half-horse, half... God knows what... A cross between a donkey, a horse and with an admixture cows...
<...>“There’s nothing to be done,” says the Horseman, “he’s not going anywhere; just liberals with whom you can’t cook porridge.”... The Emperor’s noble, half-sad, as if turned inward look surprisingly conveys his figure, his “style.” "as I remember him; and in an amazing way this is captured and conveyed in such a rough, hard material as bronze. This happened because the gaze of Alexander III was the artistic center of his figure and must have expressed his soul, that “single soul” that was reflected in gestures, manners, and the position of his neck and chest...
<...>The horse is stubborn and dances neither under spurs nor under music. On this “bummer monster” rests regally a huge figure, with a noble and sad face, so far from the idea of certainly dragging someone down, driving someone somewhere. Although “you have to go somewhere”... Between the good, “good destiny” of the Horseman and the evil horse with its mouth open there is some kind of bewilderment, something inappropriate. The horse obviously does not understand the Rider, who is clearly good, suggesting that he has “evil intent” to put him in a hole, to drop him into the abyss. The horse is so stupid that he doesn’t see that the rider will fly there with him, and that means he clearly doesn’t have “evil intent,” he can’t have it.
<...> seeing that the horse is snoring, the rider takes him for a crazy, completely wild and dangerous horse, which if you can’t ride, then at least you should stand safely and motionless. And so it all stopped, rested..."
The twin monument to the Emperor was installed in another part of the Trans-Siberian Railway - in the city of Irkutsk. The Siberian monument was destroyed under Soviet rule.
After the revolution, they preferred not to remember the founder of the country’s most important transport artery. In 1919, Demyan Bedny’s poem “The Scarecrow” was engraved on the marble pedestal of the monument. In 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the monument was used for the festive decoration of the square: it was enclosed in a metal cage, and next to it was attached a helical tower, a wheel, and two masts, on which a hammer and sickle and the inscription “USSR” were suspended. On the night of October 15, 1937, under the pretext of reconstructing Vosstaniya Square and laying tram tracks along Nevsky Prospekt, the monument was dismantled and transferred to a warehouse. Although by that time trams had been running around the square for thirty years and did not touch the sculpture.
In 1939, the monument was transferred to the State Russian Museum. The monument was moved to the Mikhailovsky Garden. During the blockade, museum workers created protective structures made of logs and sandbags around the monument. During the shelling, the monument had to survive a direct hit from a shell, but it passed without a trace.
After the Great Patriotic War in 1950, three stones were removed from the pedestal, which had been disassembled into blocks, and were used to create busts of heroes of the Soviet Union and a monument to Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1953, the monument was raised and moved to the courtyard of the Russian Museum. The monument was visible through a cast-iron grate, thanks to which it was popularly nicknamed “the prisoner.”
In the 1980s, during the renovation of the Benois building, the statue was removed under a wooden cover.
It was reopened in 1990.
In 1994, an equestrian statue of Alexander III was installed in front of the entrance to the Marble Palace (a branch of the Russian Museum). Previously, the Marble Palace housed the V.I. Lenin, in front of which since 1937 there has been an armored car "Enemy of Capital" (now moved to the Museum of Artillery and Military Engineering Troops). The new pedestal for the monument to Alexander III was the pedestal of the “Lenin armored car”. At the moment, the monument to the Emperor is a museum exhibit and is included in the federal register of museum values.
In 2013, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky proposed returning the monument to Alexander III to its historical site. Konyushennaya and Troitskaya squares were also named as possible locations for the monument.
After discussion in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, the transfer of the monument to Vosstaniya Square was rejected, and the transfer to Konyushennaya was considered untimely.
Preference was given to the project of the Italian sculptor P.P. Trubetskoy - the son of Prince P.I. Trubetskoy, who served in the Russian embassy in Florence, and the American Ada Vinas. Arriving in Russia in 1897 - 1906, Paolo Trubetskoy became one of the founding members of the World of Art society. He himself, as a sculptor, created several monuments: to L. Tolstoy and A.S. Pushkin, but became famous precisely for the creation of the monument to Alexander III. P. Trubetskoy was the first and most consistent representative of the direction of impressionism in sculpture.
To work on the monument, a special workshop-pavilion made of glass and iron was built on Staro-Nevsky Prospect, not far from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In the preparatory stage, which lasted eight years, Trubetskoy created eight small-sized models, four life-size and two on the scale of the monument itself.
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich saw “Trubetskoy’s model as a caricature of his brother.” However, the Dowager Empress found the portrait resemblance of the sculpture quite pronounced and contributed to the completion of work on the monument. For the figure of the horseman, Trubetskoy was posed by the sergeant major of the palace department, P. Pustov, who has a great resemblance to the Emperor. The model of the horse was Alexander III’s own horse. The Emperor’s Horse. Alexandra III.1909
According to the original idea, plot bas-reliefs depicting the conquest of Siberia by Ermak and the meeting of the first railway train by the inhabitants of Siberia were to be placed on the sides of the pedestal. But later the sculptor abandoned them.
The casting of the monument was carried out in St. Petersburg by the Italian foundry master E. Sperati, specially invited from Turin. The monument was converted into bronze in parts: the figure of the Emperor - in the workshop of the foundry worker K. Robecki, and the figure of the horse - at the Obukhov steel plant.
The pedestal, more than three measures in height, was made of Valaam red granite, according to the design of the architect F.O. Shekhtel. On the front side of the pedestal there was an inscription: “TO THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER III, THE SOVEREIGN FOUNDER OF THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROUTE.”
A complex foundation was created for the monument on Znamenskaya Square. The creation of a bronze monument to Alexander III cost the treasury 1,200,000 rubles.
On May 23 (June 5, New Style), 1909, the monument was consecrated and inaugurated. Emperor Nicholas II attended the ceremony. The service was led by Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky). At the request of Alexander III’s son, Emperor Nicholas II, an inscription was created on the pedestal: “Loving son to beloved father.”
Opinions about the monument were very controversial.
There was an opinion in the city that the monument to Alexander III was supposed to be erected in the Ural Mountains, on the border of Europe and Asia, and that is why it was created so massive and heavy. It was believed that the monument would be viewed from the windows of a speeding train, from a great distance, so that the massiveness of the statue would not be so noticeable.
During his lifetime, Emperor Alexander III was distinguished by his remarkable physical strength and gigantic height: 193 cm. He broke coins and bent horseshoes with his bare hands, and over the years he became even more stocky and bulky. S.Yu. Witte wrote about him: “In appearance he looked like a big Russian peasant from the central provinces; a suit would suit him best: a sheepskin coat, a jacket and bast shoes.”
V.V. Rozanov in his article “Paolo Trubezkoi and his monument to Alexander III” describes the impression of the monument as follows: “The horse rested... The head is stubborn and stupid. My hair almost sticks out like a hedgehog. The horse does not understand where he is being pushed. And he doesn’t want to go anywhere. The horse is a terrible liberal: his head is neither back, nor forward, nor to the side. “Give me reform, without it I won’t move.” - “There will be a reform for you!”... It hurts the horse: the mouthpiece terribly spread out the mouth, the lower jaw is almost at a right angle to the line of the head. <...> the horse's head is stubborn and ingenious, “like all of us,” “like Rus',” like “our intelligentsia.” - "Let me into the light!" But there is no tail, this clever girl’s tail has been eaten off. Between the tail - or, better to say, the “lack of a tail” - and the angry, grinning head there is a huge body with barrels, with legs, with an abdomen, the likes of which absolutely no horse has, and Trubetskoy... clearly it was not a horse that was drawn, but a devil knows what! “Inspiration”, unconsciousness!.. That’s exactly what was needed: well, what a “horse” Russia is - a pig, not a horse. <...> Trubetskoy <...> put a stubborn, angry, almost donkey's head ("rested down like a donkey") on a huge half-horse, half... God knows what... A cross between a donkey, a horse and with an admixture cows...
<...>“There’s nothing to be done,” says the Horseman, “he’s not going anywhere; just liberals with whom you can’t cook porridge.”... The Emperor’s noble, half-sad, as if turned inward look surprisingly conveys his figure, his “style.” "as I remember him; and in an amazing way this is captured and conveyed in such a rough, hard material as bronze. This happened because the gaze of Alexander III was the artistic center of his figure and must have expressed his soul, that “single soul” that was reflected in gestures, manners, and the position of his neck and chest...
<...>The horse is stubborn and dances neither under spurs nor under music. On this “bummer monster” rests regally a huge figure, with a noble and sad face, so far from the idea of certainly dragging someone down, driving someone somewhere. Although “you have to go somewhere”... Between the good, “good destiny” of the Horseman and the evil horse with its mouth open there is some kind of bewilderment, something inappropriate. The horse obviously does not understand the Rider, who is clearly good, suggesting that he has “evil intent” to put him in a hole, to drop him into the abyss. The horse is so stupid that he doesn’t see that the rider will fly there with him, and that means he clearly doesn’t have “evil intent,” he can’t have it.
<...> seeing that the horse is snoring, the rider takes him for a crazy, completely wild and dangerous horse, which if you can’t ride, then at least you should stand safely and motionless. And so it all stopped, rested..."
The twin monument to the Emperor was installed in another part of the Trans-Siberian Railway - in the city of Irkutsk. The Siberian monument was destroyed under Soviet rule.
After the revolution, they preferred not to remember the founder of the country’s most important transport artery. In 1919, Demyan Bedny’s poem “The Scarecrow” was engraved on the marble pedestal of the monument. In 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the monument was used for the festive decoration of the square: it was enclosed in a metal cage, and next to it was attached a helical tower, a wheel, and two masts, on which a hammer and sickle and the inscription “USSR” were suspended. On the night of October 15, 1937, under the pretext of reconstructing Vosstaniya Square and laying tram tracks along Nevsky Prospekt, the monument was dismantled and transferred to a warehouse. Although by that time trams had been running around the square for thirty years and did not touch the sculpture.
In 1939, the monument was transferred to the State Russian Museum. The monument was moved to the Mikhailovsky Garden. During the blockade, museum workers created protective structures made of logs and sandbags around the monument. During the shelling, the monument had to survive a direct hit from a shell, but it passed without a trace.
After the Great Patriotic War in 1950, three stones were removed from the pedestal, which had been disassembled into blocks, and were used to create busts of heroes of the Soviet Union and a monument to Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1953, the monument was raised and moved to the courtyard of the Russian Museum. The monument was visible through a cast-iron grate, thanks to which it was popularly nicknamed “the prisoner.”
In the 1980s, during the renovation of the Benois building, the statue was removed under a wooden cover.
It was reopened in 1990.
In 1994, an equestrian statue of Alexander III was installed in front of the entrance to the Marble Palace (a branch of the Russian Museum). Previously, the Marble Palace housed the V.I. Lenin, in front of which since 1937 there has been an armored car "Enemy of Capital" (now moved to the Museum of Artillery and Military Engineering Troops). The new pedestal for the monument to Alexander III was the pedestal of the “Lenin armored car”. At the moment, the monument to the Emperor is a museum exhibit and is included in the federal register of museum values.
In 2013, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky proposed returning the monument to Alexander III to its historical site. Konyushennaya and Troitskaya squares were also named as possible locations for the monument.
After discussion in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, the transfer of the monument to Vosstaniya Square was rejected, and the transfer to Konyushennaya was considered untimely.
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