Cultural heritage and modernity: what The Telegraph noted in the Turkmen experience
Several years ago, the British newspaper The Telegraph published a list and photographs of 12 mighty Soviet relics that a tourist can still visit in the present-day independent states.
Lenin statue in the center of Ashgabat is among them. It was underlined that compared with other Soviet-era statues, Ashgabat’s lstatue of Lenin is “teeny-tiny: just a couple of metres high, with a weedy arm outstretched”. Its plinth, however, is “enormous – decorated with Central Asian-style tilework and surrounded by fountains.
The author of the article in the British The Telegraph wrote that the monument “faces the former Archive of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan, a typical Communist concrete block, with modernist sculptures by Ernst Neizvestny, a Russian artist.
The history of creation of the Lenin statue – a colorful cultural monument of Turkmenistan of the 20th century, as well as the fate of its authors – the sculptor E.R. Trypolskaya, the architect A.A. Karelin and the ceramist N.I. Nazarov are interesting.
On January 27, 1924, in day of a funeral of the “leader of the world proletariat”, laying of a monument took place, and less than four years later, on November 7, 1927, it was erected in the city center.
On May 1, 1929, the monument was finally open for a public inspection. The monument is made of bronze, it is the statue altered in details created in 1924 by the Leningrad sculptor V. V. Kozlov. But it is not its main feature.
Not the sculpture, but a pedestal, in the decoration of which the original technique of execution and national ornaments were used, made this monument a real masterpiece of monumental art.
The huge pedestal is decorated with carpet mayolikovy panels, which are a special kind of ceramic with painted glaze.
All facets of the pedestal are brightly colored carpet panels decorated with ornaments typical for carpets in various regions of Turkmenistan.
The work on the creation of the monument was of high quality, so the monument sustained the Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 practically without damages.
Yes, and the human hand did not destroy it during the period of dashing re-evaluations of values that took place in almost all the sister republics.
Nowadays this unique sculptor remains as evidence of the careful attitude of the people of Turkmenistan to their history and national heritage, which is indicative feature of every civilized nation, its high culture and spirituality ...
Ogulgozel SAHATOVA
