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Sima Yi
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Moscow plans to remove 'Terminator' statue
Moscow's new acting mayor is pushing to remove a giant statue of Peter the Great from the heart of the capital, as part of an unravelling of his sacked predecessor's legacy.
Published: 2:29PM BST 05 Oct 2010
Zurab Tsereteli's statue of Peter the Great Photo: REX FEATURES
The 328ft high sculpture was erected in 1997 Photo: REX FEATURES
The statue, a work by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, a nearly 328ft high edifice in central Moscow, was vehemently opposed when the Moscow government, headed by Yury Luzhkov, erected it in 1997. "A smart man learns from other people's mistakes," said Vladimir Resin, acting mayor of the capital.
He proposed to move the statue from central Moscow "somewhere else", Interfax reported. The statue, which sits on the tip of a Moscow river island less than a mile from the Kremlin, pictures Peter the Great on a small ship with tiny sails, holding up a scroll. Peter the Great, who hated Moscow, moved the Russian capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1712.
"Terminator" and "Gulliver" were just a couple of nicknames for the monument, which is regularly featured in global rankings of the world's worst statues and was opposed by Russian former President Boris Yeltsin who called it "ugly" and advised Luzhkov to support other artists.
"It's a monument to the so-called Luzhkov style, both in art and in his style of city management," Konstantin Mikhailov, a coordinator in Arkhnadzor, an architecture preservation group in Moscow. Removing it would be "good for the city." Tsereteli has long been considered the court sculptor of Yury Luzhkov's Moscow government, and has authored two sculptures of the former mayor.
One presents him with a broom in the role of streetcleaner, in the other a barechested Luzhkov is dynamically playing tennis. Dmitry Medvedev last week sacked Mr Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor for the past 18 years, saying he had lost confidence in him. The sacking came after a convoluted tug-of-war between the Kremlin and Luzhkov who had chosen to openly challenge Medvedev in a largely unprecedented move.
