by Isabel Post

ARIA Undergraduate Researcher, McGill University

A crumbling communist monument in eastern Bulgaria faces a new hope of restoration. According to a report by the Calvert Journal, Bulgaria’s “Buzludzha” monument recently opened its doors to a group of reporters for the first time since its abandonment after the fall of the Bulgarian communist regime. This development is a major breakthrough for an ongoing grassroots movement to restore the monument as a museum and tourist attraction.

Construction on the “House-monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party” began in 1974 and was finished by 1981. Buzludzha mountain was chosen as the site in order to commemorate an 1891 secret convention of Bulgarian socialists that resulted in the formation of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, a forerunner to the Bulgarian Communist Party. The construction of the monument was a massive undertaking, funded primarily by stamps sold to the Bulgarian people. Over 70,000 tons of concrete and 35,000 tons of cobalt glass were used to complete the structure and the mosaics inside, and the total cost of the project was more than 25,000 lev (about 35 million USD today). The investment had a short return-- the monument was open to the public for only eight years before it was abandoned in 1989, when the Bulgarian communist regime fell from power. It has since fallen into serious disrepair as a result of neglect and vandalism.

Despite being officially closed, the site has maintained limited popularity in recent years as a tourist attraction (for those who dare to find their own way in) and as the backdrop for a few music videos, thanks to its aesthetic and historical appeal. Massive and striking, Buzludzha dominates the mountainous landscape. Inside, the walls are covered with mosaics depicting famous figures in the history of Bulgarian communism.

For the past few years, a conservation effort known as The Buzludzha Project has appealed to international conservation groups for funding to repair, renovate, and re-open Buzludzha. The long-term goal of the project is not only to preserve the monument, but to transform the monument’s content to fit within a modern cultural context. The content of the monument, which in its present state celebrates Bulgarian communism, will be upgraded with “new museum elements” in order to present a “full and comprehensive account of Bulgarian history.” The end result, according to the project’s website, would be an educational complex that positions Bulgaria’s communist past within the entire framework of the country’s history since antiquity.

A major breakthrough for the project came in March, when conservation group Europa Nostra named Buzludzha as one of Europe’s seven most endangered cultural heritage sites. Most recently, the monument was opened officially for the first time since its closure, when reporters were allowed inside to photograph the decaying interior. According to the Calvert Journal, this is in anticipation of a visit later this year from European and Bulgarian experts who will assess the structural integrity of the monument, “with the view of opening it officially to tourists.”

Before the announcement in March of Buzludzha’s classification as an endangered site and the resulting snowball of administrative progress, the future of the site was hardly certain. In November of 2016, Bulgarian lawmakers voted to outlaw the public display of communist symbols. This was a blow for the Buzluzhda Project’s organizers, who feared the law might preclude Buzludzha monument from re-entry into state-sanctioned commemoration. It remains uncertain how this law and the iconography of the site will reconcile. Perhaps the monument will experience the same fate as the Heineken logo in Hungary, where a similar ban on communist iconography threatened display of the logo thanks to its red five-pointed star, but ultimately did not lead to enforced censorship. In any case, while restoration presents significant obstacles-- both physical and bureaucratic-- a reconstructed and repurposed Buzludzha will allow Bulgaria to benefit from a cultural asset almost lost to time.

Sources:

Davies, Katie. "Bulgaria's Buzludzha Monument Opens Its Doors for the First Time in 8 Years." The Calvert Journal. May 18, 2018. Accessed May 25, 2018. http://www.calvertjournal.com/news/show/10037/bulgarias-buzludzha-monument-doors-open-tourists-survey.

http://www.calvertjournal.com/news/show/10037/bulgarias-buzludzha-monument-doors-open-tourists-survey

Lee, Nathaniel. "Take a Look inside an Abandoned $35M Communist Monument." Business Insider. December 12, 2017. Accessed May 25, 2018. http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-abandoned-buzludzha-monument-in-bulgaria-2017-12.

http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-abandoned-buzludzha-monument-in-bulgaria-2017-12

Testado, Justine. "Bulgaria's Buzludzha Monument Opens Its Doors for the First Time in Eight Years, with Restoration Plans Underway." Archinect. May 23, 2018. Accessed May 25, 2018. https://archinect.com/news/article/150065970/bulgaria-s-buzludzha-monument-opens-its-doors-for-the-first-time-in-eight-years-with-restoration-plans-underway.

https://archinect.com/news/article/150065970/bulgaria-s-buzludzha-monument-opens-its-doors-for-the-first-time-in-eight-years-with-restoration-plans-underway

The Buzluzhda Monument Project website:

http://www.buzludzha-monument.com/history/

Images:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/20140622_Buzludzha_016.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Buzludzha_monument#/media/File:Buzludzha_2009_04.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Buzludzha_monument#/media/File:20140618_Buzludzha_01.jpg

ARIA Undergraduate Researcher at McGill University

What do Hillary Clinton, James Joyce, and Michael Jackson have in common? For one thing, they’re all memorialized in the post-Communist world. A search through the Post-Communist Monuments Project’s database illustrates the prevalence and content of monuments to foreigners in this space. In this article, I’ll discuss the distribution of nationalities of the figures memorialized as well as the contexts for their memorialization. Finally, I will explore the social significance of a recent spate of monuments to foreign celebrities.

I focused my analysis on the memorialization of nationals not of the Communist/post-Communist states in order to identify patterns in their commemoration. In total, only a small percentage of entries in the post-Communist monuments database concerned monuments dedicated to foreigners; the figure stands at 4.17 percent, or 82 out of 2036 “newsworthy” monuments between 1984 and 2009. Generally, I did not include monuments to nationals of neighbouring Communist states (for example, a monument to Lenin in Ukraine) in this statistic. The number may seem low, however considering the fact that only 2.5 percent of the database’s entries go to women, it’s a significant figure.

What country’s nationals are most represented in these monuments? There was plenty of overlap of media coverage on the same monument, so it doesn’t stand to quantify the entries. However, the number of monuments as a percentage of all monuments to foreigners is distributed as following: French (8 %), British (10%), American (24%), Japanese (16%), Swede (10%), Austrian (2%), Irish (4%), French (4%), Danish (2 %), Norwegian (2 %), West German (4%), Turkish (4%), Italian (10%), Venezuelan (2%), and Spanish (2%). While these figures can’t represent the actual distribution of monuments in the post-Communist world by nationality, they can speak to a general trend favoring Americans and Western Europeans.

As shown by the data, while it seems that a foreigner’s best bet to being memorialized in the post-Communist world is to be from the United States or Western Europe, there is no particular nationality that dominates the category. More conducive to likelihood of memorialization is the experience of that individual that warranted their memorialization-- in other words, the content of a life lends itself better to likelihood of memorialization than nationality does. Of these monuments to foreigners, most commemorate military and civilian casualties of war. Within this category, most of these people lost their lives during World War II (including the Holocaust), followed by World War I, and finally the Yugoslav Wars. Other tragedies include the September 11th Attacks and imprisonment in the GULAG system. The next most common subject type is occupied by political actors, including politicians, diplomats, and military generals. Finally, a minority of monuments to foreigners commemorate writers, musicians, and other artists.

It seems that nationality does not have bearing on what type of actor is commemorated. For example, monuments to Americans were primarily memorials to military servicemen but included artists and politicians. Japanese honoured were just as likely to be civilians as servicemen; several monuments were erected to Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who saved an estimated 6,000 Jews from murder during Holocaust. Tied for third place are monuments to British, Swedish, and Italian nationals. There is no distinct “type” of subject among these nationalities either-- for example, just under half of Monuments to Italians focus commemoration on a military figure or the military past of a figure otherwise occupied. The remainder includes such varied subjects as the 1000 Italians who perished in the GULAG system and poet Dante Alighieri.

As Izabela Steflja writes in “To History or Hollywood: Monuments to Foreign Celebrities in 21st Century Balkans”, “Popular memories and their expressions, including monuments, exist because a specific community believes that an object, individual, or space is significant enough that it should be passed onto the next generation.” Civilian and military casualties of war, indigenous or foreign, are easily defensible as being worthy of commemoration for future generations; An example of such a defense might be that a nation’s war dead command the same respect as is attributed to the nation. More difficult to rationalize-- and therefore perhaps more socially significant in their creation-- are monuments to foreign artists and celebrities. Examples such as the James Joyce statue in Ljubljana and the Sylvester Stallone statue in Žitište, Serbia raise questions as to what leads to the commemoration of a figure, particularly when they are not tied to the geographic location of the monument. Steflja’s article treats the “spate of monuments” to western celebrities in the former Yugoslavia as a unique phenomenon and the result of “turning toward the outside”, or perhaps even a reflection of the idea to “think globally, act locally.” Critically, Steflja argues that in the Balkans, these have been civil-society led movements to memorialize these figures. Reception, however, has not been overwhelmingly positive: Steflja cites an artist’s criticism that through these monuments, “history is being replaced by Mickey Mouse.” Previously discussed data suggest that this is not the case, but rather that “legitimate” history is still very much the main focus of monuments to non-indigenous entities in the post-Communist world.

To conclude, while monuments to foreigners in the post-Communist world are a minority, their prevalence in the collection of “newsworthy” monuments suggests they are relatively common. While there is no one nationality that dominates the grouping, Americans and Western Europeans are the focus of most of these monuments. The monuments are most likely to commemorate victims of the World Wars and the Holocaust, but political figures feature prominently as well. Finally, as discussed by Izabela Steflja, more recently constructed monuments to foreigners, unable to be attributed as war memorials, are likely reflective of an ideological shift towards openness and global citizenship, as exemplified in the Western Balkans.

Sources:

Izabela Steflja (2015) To History or to Hollywood? Monuments to Foreign Celebrities in Twenty-First Century Balkans, Europe-Asia Studies, 67:8, 1302-1327, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2015.1075962

Yekaterina Sinelschikova (2018) From Marx to Michael Jackson: Which Foreigners Are Honored with a Statue in Russia?" Russia Beyond. January 02, 2018.. https://www.rbth.com/arts/327205-foreigners-monuments-in-russia.

ARIA Undergraduate Researcher at McGill University

Where are the monuments to women in the post-Communist world, and what do they look like? Are women better represented in this space than outside of it? How have monuments to women or depicting women fared since the collapse of communism? To answer these questions, I coded the Post-Communist Monuments Project’s database of alterations to post-Communist monuments between 1984 and 2009, as well as used some informal data from Google Images search results, to shed light on the prevalence and content of monuments to women in the post-Communist world.

The database I initially used to measure representation of women documents action associated with monuments by collecting and quantifying media representation of the events, incidents, and discussions that surround them. Therefore, the examples that came to light in this initial research can only indicate monuments to women that are subjected to action, rather than the vast population of monuments to women that simply exists but does not make headlines. However, monuments to women that undergo action are somewhat representative of the larger body of monuments to women, therefore allowing the possibility for broader conclusions to be drawn from their analysis.

The most straightforward finding of the database analysis was that monuments to women make up a miniscule percentage of the total monuments that made headlines during between 1989 and 2009. Of the 2036 monuments used in the analysis, women were the focus or primary content of only 50, roughly 2.4 percent, or one out of every 41 monuments. While it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that women are grossly underrepresented in monuments, this figure is much lower than I had originally expected. That said, the figure does not account for depictions of women as part of larger groups in statues in which they are not the primary focus of the monument’s content, which may deflate the statistic. The rarity of monuments to women is in the post-Communist world is significant, but unlikely to be an anomaly. Rather, I theorize that it’s only a semi-localized example of a ubiquitous dearth of such monuments in the world.

I had also hypothesized that women would be primarily represented as ideological symbols: for example, a kolkhoznitsa or Mother Homeland. This theory was prompted by an prior informal study using Google Images which indicated that in western countries, women were more often portrayed in monuments as ideological symbols than as individuals. Initially, this appeared not to be the case-- in the post-Communist world; 25 (50 %) of monuments to women documented were dedicated to individual women, or 1.4 percent of the entire database. However, this disparity is likely to have resulted from the two types of data collection: google image search versus news article collection. To clarify, I followed up with a  google image search on 10 post-Communist countries (Albania, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, and Georgia) and found that the prevalence of monuments to individual women was not in fact greater than in the non-post-Communist world. So, while we can say that the majority of “newsworthy” post-Communist monuments to women memorialize monuments to individual women, this is not a constant across monuments in this space, and can’t be logically compared to the prevalence of monuments to women outside the space.

On a related note, interestingly enough, the Google Images search returned more monuments to symbolic women than the search done on monuments in Britain (5% versus 2.4% respectively). Because counting results on Google Images for “(country name) monument) is hardly an exact science, this could be meaningless, but does warrant further investigation.

Going back to the database search, the different categories of women portrayed also proved significant and contradicted my expectations. Overall, the monuments to individual women that received news coverage 1984-2009 most commonly memorialized female political figures. This figure stands at 11 monuments, or 42%. While I had hypothesized that most individual women commemorated would be memorialized for their achievements in non-political spheres, such as art, poetry, or dance, this this was also not the case. Of the 25 monuments in the database to individual women, only 6, or 24%, were to women in the arts. This figure consists of three poets, one actress, one dancer, and one singer. Next, another six monuments (24%) memorialized women as individuals for their accomplishments outside the realm of politics or the arts-- for example, women such as pioneer aviator Valentina Grizodubova or famous Communist partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Finally, three of the monuments (12%) memorialize women for their connection to a famous man; these monuments are to the mother of Yuri Gagarin, the first wife of Genghis Khan, and the Virgin Mary.

Why are most of these women political figures? Initially I posited that this could be caused by a uniquely substantive inclusion of women in politics in communist regimes compared with the rest of the world. Generally, women were better represented in politics in communist regimes than outside of them^[1]. However, further coding showed that only 27 percent of monuments to political women referred to women in politics under communism (to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Milada Horakova, and Galina Starovoitova). More significantly, 54 percent of monuments to political women referred to the pre-Communist period (three of which are to Catherine the Great, with the other three featuring Kurmanjan Datka of Kyrgyzstan and Rosa Luxemburg, and the executed Romanov women), and the remaining 18 percent to the post-Communist period (Yulia Tymoshenko and Anna Lindh). Therefore, although this could speak to a disparity in the mechanisms by which women could become accomplished under communist regimes (through politics) versus outside of it, this is unlikely given the distribution of these women across their respective time periods. Another interesting finding was that 100 percent of the monuments to female artists were of a woman who made her career during or were built during her country’s Communist period. This may indicate that Communism actually made it easier for women to be memorialized as artists than as politicians. However, additional research on the memorialization of female artists globally is necessary to confirm that this phenomenon is specific at all to the post-Communist world rather than simply the product of a common era.

Comparatively, New York City’s central park contains 23 monuments to individual male historical figures, but not a single depiction of an individual woman^[2]. Similarly, an informal study on monuments in the UK found that 28 percent of monuments to women were to individual women in history (who are not the Virgin Mary)^[3], compared to 50 percent of “newsworthy” monuments in the post-Communist world (both of these statistics include royal women, who in both cases account for approximately half of the historical women). So, are women actually better represented as individuals in monuments of the post-Communist world? Realistically, this doesn’t seem to be the case, as the database findings that suggested women were better represented in the postcommunist world were contradicted by the Google Images data. The reason for the disparity in findings could be is likely that the database catalogues only monuments deemed “newsworthy”, while Google Images tends to give search results that are more static, from travel websites and Wikipedia articles. In the absence of congruent databases, it’s not possible to say whether women are truly represented better in one context versus the other. However, it is possible to say that overall, there is a comparable dearth of monuments featuring women-- either as individuals or as symbols-- in both the post-Communist world and the space outside of it.

^[1] Elin Bjarnegård & Erik Melander (2013) Revisiting Representation: Communism, Women in Politics, and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia, International Interactions, 39:4, 558-574,DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2013.805132

^[2] https://www.citylab.com/design/2016/02/the-gender-gap-in-public-sculpture/463170/

^[3] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/03/i-sorted-uk-s-statues-gender-mere-27-cent-are-historical-non-royal-women

Photo: Steve Jobs and Dmitry Medvedev

Following the death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a monument in his memory was set up on the campus of an IT institute in St. Petersburg (Russia). Resourced by domestic company Western European Financial Union (WEFU), the Jobs monument consisted of an oversized iPhone whose touch screen the public could interact with.

However, when Tom Cook—Apple’s successive CEO—came out as gay in a public essay, the larger-than-life electronic device was taken down. Some Russian media reported that the fixture was simply under repair. But allegedly, the monument was taken down in order to comply with Russia’s infamous anti-gay ‘propaganda’ laws. Nonetheless, observers speculate that the removal could not solely be traced back to bigotry.

Writing for Fortune magazine, Philip Elmer DeWitt reports that President of WEFU Maksim Dolgopolov also cited supposed links between Apple and the NSA as a reason behind the iPhone’s confiscation. More broadly, Adam Chandler at The Atlantic suggests that this was an act of defiance against the presence of American symbols in Russia.

In any case, the Russian Holdings Company put the exiled monument up for sale—with US $ 95,000 as the asking price!

[SOURCES:]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/steve-jobs-memorial-torn-down-after-tim-cook-comes-out/382319/

Adam Chandler. “Why Russia Really Tore Down Its Jobs Memorial.” The Atlantic, November 3, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/steve-jobs-memorial-torn-down-after-tim-cook-comes-out/382319/.

http://fortune.com/2014/11/03/why-the-steve-jobs-memorial-in-st-petersburg-was-removed/

Philip Elmer-DeWitt. “Why Steve Jobs Memorial in St. Petersburg was Removed.” Fortune, November 3, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2014. http://fortune.com/2014/11/03/why-the-steve-jobs-memorial-in-st-petersburg-was-removed/.

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-st-petersburg-monument-iphone-jobs-cook-gay/26671992.html

“Monument To Apple’s Jobs Removed in Russian After CEO Comes Out.” Radio Free Europe, November 3, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2014. http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-st-petersburg-monument-iphone-jobs-cook-gay/26671992.html.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/02/buy-the-steve-jobs-monument-that-was-too-gay-for-russia-for-95/

Mike Wehner. “Buy the Steve Jobs Monument that was Too Gay for Russia for $ 95,000.” Engaget, December 2, 2015. Accessed January 15, 2015. http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/02/buy-the-steve-jobs-monument-that-was-too-gay-for-russia-for-95/.

April 24, 2015 marks the 145^th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union. After Lenin’s death, his body was preserved and put on display. It is open to the public to this day. In preparation for the special occasion, the Lenin Mausoleum located in Moscow’s Red Square was shut down. The hundred and forty-five year-old communist was due for a touch-up, having sustained ninety years of postmortem embalming procedures.

His body’s journey spans from scientists’ Vladimir Vorobiev and Boris Zbarsky’s embalming methods of 1924, to a home care cholesterol test patented in 2002 that is now marketed in Canada. Want to know how much of the body is still the original Lenin? Read about the evolution of the body’s conservation—and its surrounding history—in Scientific American, as well as in University of California, Berkeley anthropologist Alexei Yurchak’s historical analysis in “Bodies of Lenin: The Hidden Science of Communist Sovereignty.”

[SOURCES:]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lenin-s-body-improves-with-age1/

Jeremy Hsu. “Lenin’s Body Improves with Age.” Scientific American, April 22, 2015. Accessed April 25, 2015. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lenin-s-body-improves-with-age1/.

https://www.academia.edu/10400116/Bodies_of_Lenin_The_Hidden_Science_of_Communist_Sovereignty

Alexei Yurchak. “Bodies of Lenin: “The Hidden Science of Communist Sovereignty.” Representations 129 (2015): 116-157.

Right now, many post-Soviet states are in the midst of a sculptural demolition derby. Numerous countries are trying to wipe communism from their public spaces by removing monuments of a bygone era. And while Poland is certainly participating in this trend—think the ‘Four Sleepers’ debacle in Warsaw—artists near Krakow have put their own spin on distancing themselves from Russia.

As part of the Grolsch ArtBoom Festival in Krakow, artists Małgorzata Szydłowska and Bartosz Szydłowsk produced a little, bright yellow Lenin. Standing where a Soviet-era Lenin once was (and was removed in 1989), the miniature’s fountain water doubles as a urine stream.

While the ‘Fountain of the Future’ is meant to be temporary—stimulating discussion on what should really be taking its place—a permanent residence for the peeing figure would not be so bad either.

[SOURCES:]

http://time.com/2867197/polish-city-erects-statue-of-peeing-lenin/

Denver Nicks. “Polish City Erects Statue of Peeing Lenin.” Time, June 12, 2014. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://time.com/2867197/polish-city-erects-statue-of-peeing-lenin/.

http://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/39841

Max Nesterak. “Krakow Erects A Bright Yellow Statue of Lenin Peeing.” ArtSlant Los Angeles, June 13, 2014. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/39841.

http://www.artboomfestival.pl/en/4/2/10361

“Big Boom in Nova Huta.” Grolsch Artboom Festival in Krakow, June 9, 2014. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://www.artboomfestival.pl/en/4/2/10361.

If you are at all familiar with Turkmenistan’s recent history, then you have likely been acquainted with its grandiose (and often golden) monuments. Their origin can be traced back to the late Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov—or Turkmenbashi—President of Turkmenistan between 1985 and 2006, when he passed away. Gargantuan in size, these monuments served to reinforce Niyazov’s infamous cult of personality. Sculptures of him dominate the nation’s landscape to this day.

However, Niyazov’s successor (and former dentist) President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov—also known as Arkadag—seems ready to take over some of Turkmenistan’s public space. In July 2014 it was announced that—in response to alleged public demand—a new monument to Berdymukhammedov is in the cards. Arrangements for a 5-meter likeness of the President riding his horse had been made by sculptor Saragt Babaev,

[SOURCES:]

http://www.chrono-tm.org/en/2014/07/the-first-monument-to-turkmenistans-second-president/

“The First Monument to Turkmenistan’s Second President.” Chronicles of Turkmenistan, July 30, 2014. Accessed September 15, 2015. http://www.chrono-tm.org/en/2014/07/the-first-monument-to-turkmenistans-second-president/.

http://www.rferl.org/content/turkmenistan-statue-berdymukhammedov/25473028.html

Qishloq Ovozi. “Here We Go Again: Turkmen Statue Proposal Suggests History May Be Repeating Itself.” Radio Free Europe, July 28, 2014. Accesses August 21, 2014. http://www.rferl.org/content/turkmenistan-statue-berdymukhammedov/25473028.html.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/06/saparmurat_niyazov_former_president_of_turkmenistan_has_left_quite_the_legacy.html

Ella Morton. “Golden Statue and Mother Bread: The Bizarre Legacy of Turkmenistan’s Former Dictator.” Atlas Obscura, February 6, 2014. Accessed February 20, 2014. http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/06/saparmurat_niyazov_former_president_of_turkmenistan_has_left_quite_the_legacy.html.

In 1991, the city of Berlin demolished a 62-foot-high monument of Lenin in an attempt to leave its East/West divisions behind. Smashed to pieces, remnants of the statue were buried—with the head hidden in a sandpit on the outskirts of the city. Twenty-four years later, organizers of a museum exhibition are scheduling a showcase of around 100 historical monuments from Berlin. The 3.5 ton head would undoubtedly be a crowd-pulling highlight, laying bare the city’s communist past.

The exhibition is meant to provide an objective look at the city’s turbulent history. Indeed, this embracement of contentious monuments goes against the wake of recent reactions to Soviet relics in many former republics of the U.S.S.R. — and falls in line with Germany’s tendency to thoroughly acknowledge and display its less impressive historical moments. However, the project has stirred opposition to a perceived form of communist revival, and city officials have not failed to raise administrative barriers to the uprooting of the head.

Yet the final obstacle is neither political nor ideological: It is reptilian. Home to a colony of sand lizards, the sandpit containing Lenin’s head cannot be disturbed in the lead up to the creatures’ mating season. Biologists are thus helping excavators to navigate European wildlife conservation laws by drawing the lizards away from the Lenin site.

When Lenin’s debut at “Unveiled: Berlin and its Monuments” will take place is still uncertain.

[SOURCES:]

http://www.dw.de/berlin-lizards-impede-lenins-resurrection/a-18386865

David Crossland. “Berlin’s Lizards Impend Lenin’s Resurrection.” Deutsche Welle, April 18, 2015. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.dw.de/berlin-lizards-impede-lenins-resurrection/a-18386865.

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/art-culture/berlin-begins-search-lenins-head/

Joel Stonington. “Berlin Begins the Search for Lenin’s Head.” Vocativ, September 24, 2014. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.vocativ.com/culture/art-culture/berlin-begins-search-lenins-head/.

http://www.abendblatt.de/vermischtes/article205230097/Der-alte-Lenin-hat-eine-Eidechse-auf-dem-Kopf.html

Ulli Kulke. “Der alte Lenin hat eine Eidechse auf dem Kopf.” Hamburger Abendblatt, March 30, 2015. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.abendblatt.de/vermischtes/article205230097/Der-alte-Lenin-hat-eine-Eidechse-auf-dem-Kopf.html.

Adorned with laurels, armor and a toga, a new Roman-emperor-style bust of Russian President Vladimir Putin has entered into the world. The initiative to erect the bronze-cast Putin was spearheaded by St. Petersburg Cossacks, with sculptor Pavel Greshnikov creating the likeness of the ruler. The idea to commemorate Putin came in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Eastern Ukraine, which Ataman of the St. Petersburg Cossacks Andrei Polyakov says is bringing the Russian empire back together again.

This is not the first sculpture of Putin clad in curious attire. Pictured is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon posing with a grandiose monument to Putin at the Tsereteli Gallery in Moscow. Naturally, the Russian President is wearing Judo gear.

Putin’s bust will be revealed on May 9, 2015 (‘Victory Day’) at a metro station at the edge of St. Petersburg, the emperor’s hometown.

[SOURCES:]

http://www.rferl.org/content/cossacks-putin-statue-as-roman-emporer/26909584.html

“Cossacks Plan Victory Day Bust of Putin As Roman Emperor.” Radio Free Europe, March 19, 2015. Accessed March 23, 2015. http://www.rferl.org/content/cossacks-putin-statue-as-roman-emporer/26909584.html.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-depicted-roman-emperor-5385828

Dominic Smith. “Vladimir Putin to be Depicted as Roman Emperor in Statue Built in His Hometown.” Mirror, March 23, 2015. Accessed March 23, 2015. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-depicted-roman-emperor-5385828.

http://rusmania.com/central/moscow-federal-city/moscow/khamovniki/?s=russian-academy-of-arts-and-zurab-tsereteli-gallery

“Russian Academy of Arts and Zurab Tsereteli Gallery. RusMania. Accessed March 23, 2015. http://rusmania.com/central/moscow-federal-city/moscow/khamovniki/?s=russian-academy-of-arts-and-zurab-tsereteli-gallery.