For more than 120 years Alexander Pushkin has seen off every threat. Joseph Stalin deported him (if only 100m), McDonald’s first outlet in Russia opened nearby and Chechen militants allegedly detonated a bomb not far from his left foot.
All along, the statue of Russia’s most famous poet preserved a bubble of calm in the centre of Moscow. Now, finally, it seems the killer blow is at hand.
If the city government gets its way, a four-storey shopping mall and traffic tunnel will soon be built on the square where Pushkin stands on his pedestal.
PamPush — as the monument to the author is affectionately known to Muscovites — will survive, but protesters against the development warn that his square will be ruined.
”Red Square may be the heart of the city, but Pushkinskaya is its soul,” says Vladimir Makhnach, a 58-year-old architect whose apartment overlooks the threatened landmark.
”If this project goes ahead it will cease to exist as a square.”
Situated just over half a kilometre from the Kremlin on Tverskaya — the Oxford Street of Moscow — Pushkinskaya Square is dear to every Muscovite.
Although enmeshed by growing streams of traffic and overshadowed by neon billboards, it has preserved its reputation as a pocket of tranquility in the city centre.
The statue of Pushkin is a meeting place for lovers and businessmen alike. Every evening, hundreds gather by its surrounding fountains to talk, dance or simply while away the time. In times of trouble the square has been a focal point for demonstrations, and a symbol of the people’s will.
Now, in a clash between Moscow’s intelligentsia and brash new business elite, Pushkinskaya is to be developed just as the widening of the road to the city’s main airport introduces new traffic pressures on Tverskaya. The latter is part of a grander scheme that will effectively create a super highway to the heart of Moscow.
Conservationsts and the square’s residents — many of them famous figures drawn from the world of arts and culture — are up in arms. ”The world was outraged when the Taliban blew up Buddha statues in Afghanistan,” says activist Natalya Chernetsova. ”But a similar process of cultural destruction is now going on in central Moscow and no one is doing a thing.”
Critics say ventilation shafts poking above ground, increased traffic jams in the area and the disruption caused by excavations will be the last nail in the coffin for Pushkinskaya.
Among the protesters are Russia’s most celebrated film director, Nikita Mikhalkov, and actor, Alexander Lazarev, who said: ”I’m terrified even to imagine what they might build here.”
The square has a long and troubled history. Stalin tore down its Strastnoy monastery at the height of his terror in 1938, a destructive act that left the spot cursed in the eyes of many Orthodox believers, and moved Pushkin from one side to another.
In later Soviet times a series of historic buildings were altered beyond recognition. Russia’s first McDonald’s was built on the edge of the square in 1990, signaling the rapid development to come. A decade later, fresh misfortune followed when a bomb planted in an underpass killed 13 people.
Now the greatest threat is an overarching plan to transform Tverskaya into the end of a multi-lane road that feeds directly into the city centre from Sheremetyevo airport on the capital’s northern outskirts.
Besides new construction on Pushkinskaya, a tunnel is planned for the boulevard that bisects Tverskaya next to the square. Traffic lights will also be removed on Tverskaya in an attempt to speed up the flow of cars.
Mikhail Blinkin, a traffic control specialist, called the project ”ludicrous”. ”Nowhere in the world are drivers allowed to travel at high speed along streets full of shops and pedestrians,” he said.
Building an expensive shopping mall in the centre of the town would cause big problems with congestion, Blinkin predicted. ”If you go to buy a $15 000 fur coat you don’t travel on the metro, do you?”
Residents took heart after members of the city government’s expert council spoke out against the development. Yuri Bocharov, a senior member, compared the plans to ”children’s babble”.
Natalia Klimova, a spokesperson for Moscow’s chief architect, Alexander Kuzmin, confirmed the plans but insisted that no final decision had been made on the ”reconstruction” of Pushkinskaya.
Protesters fear that commercial interests driving the project will push it through regardless. ”Our beloved square will soon be gone forever,” said Chernetsova.
Monumental errors
1990: Botched restoration threatens the future of the Melnikov House, a Constructivist masterpiece.
1997: Zurab Tsereteli, the Georgian monumental artist, causes outrage with his 95m monument to Peter the Great on the Moscow river.
2003: Narkomfin, an early Soviet utopian building, is added to the World Monument Fund’s list of 100 most-endangered buildings as it falls into disrepair.
2004: Hotel Moskva, a Stalin-era building, is demolished to make way for underground parking. – Guardian Unlimited Â