Monumental sculpture in Leningrad during the thaw era

The research subject is the approval and erection system in relation to Leningrad monuments in 1953-1964. Based on the archive funds of the Culture Department of Leningrad City Executive Committee, the author identifies and describes connotations between the monument art control and the replication of monuments to party leaders. The research confirmed the assumption that the similar Soviet monuments were not the element of the planned ideologization of the public space aimed at providing the conceptual unity of Soviet society, and, on the contrary, were the result of the imperfect mechanism of central government. The bureaucratic erection of official monuments and first spontaneous monuments (park sculpture) in contemporary St. Petersburg often lead to contradictions between the authorities and society (for instance, the unnamed monument to Brodsky has been built in May 2018) that update the problematic coexistence of the official and unofficial strategy for building new monuments in the historical perspective.