Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 10 – More than half
of Vologda residents say they have no idea who Joseph Conrad was and only four
percent have read the works of the great Polish-English writer, but 12.8
percent want to remove a statue honoring him from their city, with an
additional 7.1 percent calling for it to
be shifted to a less prominent place.
According to Severinform.ru, the
Conrad monument was erected by the Polish government in April 2013 in
recognition of the fact that the future writer lived in that Russian city as a
child and at the same was welcomed by local officials as an indication of
cultural cooperation (severinform.ru/?page=newsfull&date=06-04-2016&newsid=241337).
But that was before two events which
have changed the situation in that northern Russian city: On the one hand,
there has been an upsurge in Russian nationalism in the wake of Moscow’s
Anschluss of Crimea. And on the other, many Russians are upset about Poland’s
plans to tear down more than 500 Soviet monuments as part of a de-communization
effort.
The reason the Poles wanted to erect
a Conrad monument in Vologda was that the future writer moved there with his parents. But as Vologda bloggers have pointed out, the
family didn’t just move there: they were exiled after Russia’s suppression of
the Polish uprising in 1863 in which Conrad’s father had participated.
Indeed, Severinform writes, what the
father did was “little different” from what those who fought for the
independence of Chechnya-Ichkeria two decades ago and thus equally deserving of
condemnation rather than honor.
Joseph Conrad personally was no
better, the news service says. He fled Russia to avoid military service, hid
his knowledge of the Russian language, and condemned Dostoyevsky as a failed
novelist. The outlet does not note that
he also penned two remarkable novels about Russian secret service links to
espionage and terrorism, “The Secret Agent” and “Under Western Eyes.” Perhaps
the Vologda writer hasn’t read them.
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