This is not Cuba! A monument to Fidel will be erected in Moscow contrary to his will

Ivan Zubov

As it became clear back in February, a monument to the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, will be erected in Moscow. A 3-meter bronze figure by sculptor Alexei Chebanenko worth about 20 million rubles will stand in the area of Sandy Streets on Sokol.

This action will be timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Castro's visit to the USSR. He arrived in the Land of the Soviets at the end of April 1963 and traveled for 38 days. According to eyewitnesses, Fidel was incredibly popular among the people:

“In Ukraine, he just pointed at the map – take me there. Well, they brought ... to some village near Kyiv (pictured). Fidel stopped the car at the pig farm, jumped over the fence and went to the pig sty. We talked about work ... and then: “Come on, Masha (that was the name of the woman), let's see your house, treat you with something?”

In the hut, the collective farmer got bread, pickled apples, eggs, bacon, potatoes. Yesterday's borscht from the oven. Embarrassed by the bosses, she did not dare to get moonshine, but they persuaded ... The conversation became sincere. Fidel beamed: “I don’t need your dry reports on the economy. I am happy to see that the simplest people live well and in abundance. At the end of this visit, Fidel announced the eternal indestructible brotherhood of Cuba and the USSR ... "

However, the friendship did not last very long and by the end of the USSR it disappeared no matter how it happened, and therefore a rare unanimity reigns in social networks: why does Moscow need a monument to Fidel?

- Hot fans of the Cuban revolution, who tell us how great it is to live in Cuba and how well, for example, medicine is established there, for some reason they prefer not to move to Cuba. Does Moscow need another monument to a foreign communist and revolutionary? For me, the answer is "no" is more than obvious. What did Comrade Fidel do specifically for Moscow? Why is he valuable to us? The fact that he drank in the Moscow region with Comrade Brezhnev on the hunt?

- It's put on public money, for a second. At the same time, there is no monument to Ivan III in the city, under which the Kremlin was built in its modern form, as well as the Assumption Cathedral, in which all the kings were married. There is no monument to Alexander III in Moscow either. It was at the beginning of the century, but the Bolsheviks destroyed it.

The one to whom monuments are erected in the country is the most important indicator of the ideological vector. We still keep hanging out between February (Sakharov) and October (Castro) 1917. And until we go beyond this humiliating ideological pen, nothing will change .

But the Moscow art historian Galina Elshevskaya , who will have the dubious pleasure of watching Fidel from the window of her apartment every day, drew attention to another aspect:

“At this place, in a few, apparently, days, a bearded idol will appear, called Fidel. Which, which is especially funny, during his lifetime managed to order that no monuments be erected to him and no name be used in toponymy. But the Moscow government, as it turned out, loves him very much, and the power of love, of course, is capable of sweeping away any obstacles; "Love conquers death," said who knows.

It is also interesting here how this great construction site, which I watch every day from the balcony, began. And it began literally with an illustration of the old thesis "there is a word, but there is no asshole." That is, “Fidel Castro Square” first appeared on the map - the name without any square, because this ellipse of the dividing strip, where flowers were planted in spring, didn’t pull on the role of a square. They began to harmonize; presumably, they wanted to be in time for the character’s birthday, but it didn’t work out, although the workers, who didn’t even have a toilet on the site (and at this place I’m blown away with an ironic tone), worked hard from early morning until late evening. Well, the pedestal is already standing, the rolled lawn is spreading out - a matter of days. “Do you hear the beaten step? It's the barbudos coming".

It's also funny that it will be impossible to approach the monument - there is a stream of cars on the right, and on the left too. That is, like, if anyone remembers, to Dzerzhinsky in the Lubyanka: neither to put flowers on you, nor to lick your boots - untouchable. As for the untouchable idols, something culturological in my head, of course, is spinning, but I won’t unfold, and I have already written a lot..."

It remains only to remind the Moscow cultural officials that there is no monument to Fidel Castro even in Cuba itself. However, this circumstance is unlikely to stop them.