MOSCOW, February 11 (RIA Novosti) – The Moscow City Duma’s commission on monumental art on Tuesday turned down a proposal to return a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the city’s center.
There have been numerous calls to return the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky to its original spot on Lubyanskaya Square directly in front of the former KGB headquarters, but they have always been rejected by Moscow lawmakers.
“It is inadvisable to restore the statue at present because it is more of a political issue that could split society. We are unanimously against it,” said Lev Lavrenov, head of the commission.
The bronze statue of Dzerzhinsky by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich was erected in 1958.
The statue eventually acquired the nickname “Iron Felix” among Muscovites. In August 1991, after the failed coup by Politburo hardliners against then-Soviet-President Mikhail Gorbachev, the monument was toppled by a crowd of protesters, who used a crane to dismantle the 15-ton statue.
Iron Felix has been kept at the so-called “graveyard of memorials” near Moscow’s Central House of Artists, side by side with other disgraced Soviet monuments, for more than two decades.
The statue became property of the Moscow government in 2008.
Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet State Security forces under their original name Cheka (1917–26).
He remains indelibly associated with the violent subjugation of the class enemies of communism, and is both reviled and celebrated in modern Russia.
