Following quickly on the statue of Alexander II, which was unveiled this week near the Christ the Savior Cathedral, the city is moving to erect at least 20 more statues and busts all over town, said Sergei Petrov, the head of the City Duma's Commission on Monuments.
His commission, made up of historians, artists and sculptors, is in charge of combing through the hundreds of suggestions for statues that it receives every year and deciding who should be immortalized.
Among those set to go up are Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer known for "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling"; the late musician Viktor Tsoi from the rock group Kino; Konstantin Melnikov, the revolutionary constructivist architect; the former Soviet soccer captain Igor Netto; and the Nobel Prize-winning author Ivan Bunin.
Some people are so worthy that they may get two monuments. Writer Ivan Turgenev is slated for a bust and a statue, as is poet Fyodor Tyutchev, who is perhaps best known to foreigners for his esoteric line that "Russia cannot be understood by the mind."
The statue of Tsoi, which shows the musician on his beloved motorcycle, was originally supposed to be placed on the Arbat, but after residents objected the commission decided it should go on Ulitsa Lomonosova.
City Hall and the City Duma still have to give a green light to the planned statues, some of which have been on a list waiting for approval for four years.
Alexander Tantlevsky, the City Hall official in charge of statues, bluntly refused a request for comment. "What does it have to do with you?" he said.
He said no one was allowed to know about new statues until they were unveiled. "That's why the curtain is there," he said.
City Hall's wariness may be explained by the fact that the city has been embroiled in a number of controversies over statues it has approved, most notably the imposing Peter the Great statue on the Moscow River. The installment of the statue in 1996 prompted a vigorous campaign by Muscovites for its removal. Another statue that has attracted opposition is the one of Marshal Georgy Zhukov at the State Historical Museum near Red Square.
Although city authorities have the final word, anyone can suggest a person to be cast, Petrov said.
Some people write in to request statues of themselves. "There are always such people," Petrov said with a sigh.
Others have proposed statues of Mayor Yury Luzhkov and of pediatrician Lev Roshal, who negotiated with the hostage-takers at the Beslan school in September and at Moscow's Dubrovka theater in 2002.
But statues of them will not go up anytime soon, Petrov said.
"We used to put up statues to the living, but we don't do that anymore," he said.
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