Second Statue Honoring Ivan the Terrible Finally Goes Up in Putin’s Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 10 – Over the last three years, the Putin regime has promoted a veritable cult of Ivan the Terrible, who extended Muscovy’s rule over Kazan and much else and whose style of rule appealed to Stalin and now to Putin. But this week after much opposition only the second statue honoring him was erected in Russia.

            No tsarist or Soviet government ever erected a statue to Ivan, however much some of them may have admired him for what he accomplished, feeling perhaps that his cruelty made putting up such monuments inappropriate or at least counterproductive.  But the Putin regime feels no such restrictions (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/10/as-in-stalins-time-putin-era-cult-of.html).

            Nonetheless, the path toward honoring Ivan has not been an easy one despite polls showing support for such monuments. The statue that went up three days ago in Aleksandrovo, where Ivan made his capital, was supposed to go up in 2016 and be the first in Russia; but the it was put off first until 2017 and then until now (vz.ru/politics/2019/12/10/1012741.html).

            It was ready in 2016 but local officials appear to have been against the idea, and the statue was moved to Moscow where for two years it appeared in the Alley of Rulers in front of the headquarters of the nationalist Russian Military-Historical Society.  While there, it was attacked by “vandals,” Petr Akopov of Vzglyad says, and had to be repaired.

            City residents told pollsters that like most Russians elsewhere, they favored the monument. (Although in some places, surveys found that residents were overwhelmingly against honoring the brutal tsar. See hwindowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/chuvash-city-residents-vote-down-plans.html.)

            Three days ago, Ivan’s statue was erected, but even then there were controversies. Senior local officials did not attend, and many Russian nationalists were offended by their absence and by the failure of the powers that be to celebrate Ivan the Terrible in the ways they felt appropriate (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2019/12/11/pochemu_mestnaya_vlast_boitsya_ioanna_groznogo).

            The Vzglyad commentator admits that “Ivan the Terrible continues to be a dividing figure for a small but active part of society. And therefore the time for a monument to this tsar in Moscow has still not come.”  But all is not lost, he suggests, because the Russian capital in fact already has two monuments that recall him.

            The first is the Cathedral of St. Basil’s on Red Square which he ordered Italian architects to build before putting their eyes out so that they could not build another as beautiful; the second is the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye which was erected where the future tsar was born by his father Vasily III.