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Hi everyone, this is Dmitriy Balkovskiy with an update on Russian statue wars.
The whole world saw last summer that public monuments can be very controversial. Russia is no stranger to fierce public discussions involving statues. And at the end of February Muscovites were supposed to decide the fate of one such very controversial statue through online voting.

I am talking about a statue of Felix Dzerjinskiy which stood in the middle of the famed Lubianka square from 1958 to 1991, when it was torn down after the attempted Communist coup. This square is surrounded by the FSB (former KGB) headquarters.

It would be interesting to know for my western viewers that the vote was initiated by a group of left-wing intellectuals and politicians. But they are Russian left-wingers which would mean that they are extreme social conservatives but ultra-liberals economically in American terms.

Dzerjinskiy, born a Polish nobleman, was a founder of VCHK or Vserossiiskaya Chrezvichainaya Kommissia, the murderous Soviet secret police which later evolved into KGB. https://zen.yandex.ru/media/history_for_chayniks/feliks-dzerjinskii-pravdivaia-istoriia--5bbf193eb023c400aa6457ad

The spirit of this splendid organization, a “punishing sword of the revolution” is best conveyed with this quote by one of Dzerjinskiy’s associates:

“The old foundations of morality and humanity do not exist for us. We are destroying the bourgeoisie as a class. During the investigation we should not look for proof that the accused acted in word or deed against the Soviets. The first question you should ask him is to which class he belongs to, what are his social origins, education or profession. These questions should decide the fate of the accused”.

Dzerjinskiy organized the Soviet system of judicial murder and concentration camps.
He is responsible for destruction of the cream of the crop of the Old Russia – nobility, merchants, tsarist military officers and clergy.

His monument was taken down by the crowds of Muscovites after the failed communist coup in August 1991 and the square stood empty for almost 30 years. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RIAN_archive_142949_Lubyanka_Square_in_Moscow.jpg?uselang=ru

The first option is to return Dzerjinskiy’s statue to its former place. And the second option is to place there a statue of the XIII-th century Russian prince and Eastern Orthodox saint Alexander Nevskiy who successfully fought German knights and Swedes in the Russian North West.

The vote lasted for several days but was cancelled by the Moscow mayor, Sobianin. He declared that the Lubianka Square would remain unchanged so as not to sow discord.

The preliminary results were close to a draw 45% for Dzerjinskiy and 55% for Alexander Nevskiy. Powers that be of course supported St. Alexander and a possible victory of a former Bolshevik could have been seen as an embarrassment.

I would imagine that for the Western audience a relative popularity of Dzerjinskiy would come as an unpleasant surprise but those are the realities of a fallen empire.
Russian conservatives and the Orthodox Church consider a possible return of Dzerjinskiy’s statue to its former place as an attempted subversion and denigration of Russian traditional roots by local liberals and communists.