America Needs a Fallen Monument Park
The Moscow State University campus hosts a modest statue of someone you’d never expect to see immortalized in the Russian capital – American poet Walt Whitman. On the pedestal is a quote in Russian and English:
“You Russians, and we, Americans!...
So far apart from each other, so seemingly
different, and yet…in ways that are most
important, our countries are so alike…”
Whitman was correct when he claimed that Russia and America were so alike. Both nations are massive and contain multiple ethnic groups, languages, and customs. They used millions of slaves to build wealth and power. When slavery ended, the human beings whose humanity they had betrayed for centuries did not receive justice. Russia’s failure to address this sin led to a violent revolution in 1917. America’s failure led to a century-and-a-half of ingrained, systemic racism.
In recent weeks, many white people in America are starting to realize, albeit too late, what thousands of monuments that dot our cities and towns represent to others and what they say about our values and identity.
Even as statues honoring Confederate leaders come down across the country, thousands more remain. Some righteous citizens go beyond the Confederacy, demanding the removal of memorials to other 19th and 20th-century political and cultural figures who promoted white supremacy.
When these monuments fall, what should we do with them? What is the best way to preserve the past without allowing these statues to foster racism and division?
The answer is back in Moscow, three miles east from where Whitman stands sentry.
Nestled against the Moscow River, Muzeon Park of Arts features an immense green space and innumerable historical monuments. The park’s modern history dates back to October 24th, 1991, when the Moscow City Council of People Representatives decreed the removal of dozens of statues depicting Soviet leaders and ideology throughout the city. The statues would have a new home – Muzeon’s Fallen Monument Park.
Each exhibit includes a small plaque signifying the historical figure, the artist, and the date of creation. The towering statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, provides some biographical information and a disclaimer: This work is historically and culturally significant, being the memorial construction of the Soviet era, on the themes of politics and ideology.
Besides this single sentence, Fallen Monument Park does not offer lengthy political screeds against communism or the Soviet state. However, there is something that serves that purpose just as well – art. Among the fallen monuments are memorials to the oppressed. Victims to the Totalitarian Regime by Ye. I. Chubarov depicts human faces confined behind iron bars and barbed wire. The stone faces have very little detail, a reflection on how the state regarded dissenters as barely human.
By including these other voices, Fallen Monument Park provides the balance necessary to ensure that the site can never become a rallying cry for neo-totalitarianism. Also, there are no rules against touching the exhibits. You can pose for Instagram while picking Lenin’s nose, slapping Stalin, or groping one of the half-dozen Brezhnevs. The freedom to ridicule these relics further reduces the once immense power they held over the country and its people.
Our nation contains far too many future fallen monuments for just one park, so each state must step up to preserve the past in an appropriate way that allows artists to tell the other side of the story.
When these parks exist, the statues and monuments within will represent America’s moral evolution and the terrific struggle it took for progress to happen. They will be solemn places, yes, but ones that will go far in unburdening future generations of the state-sponsored racism that affects all of us in 2020.
Let the monuments fall, and let us then move them to their final resting place. It’s time.