A monument to Dzerzhinsky was unveiled at the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service

A monument to Soviet statesman Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled at the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in the capital’s Yasenevo district. About it informs TASS.

SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin took part in the ceremony. He noted that Dzerzhinsky “dreamed of creating a future based on the principles of goodness and justice.”

Naryshkin said that the monument is a smaller copy of the monument to Dzerzhinsky, which previously stood on Lubyanka Square. According to the director of the SVR, sculptor Vladimir Ivanov did painstaking work to “reproduce the image of the knight of the revolution as accurately as possible.”

The previous monument to Dzerzhinsky was created by Evgeniy Vuchetich. The sculpture weighing 11 tons was installed in 1958 near the main KGB building. During the “August Putsch” on August 22, 1991, protesters attempted to demolish the monument on their own. After this, the monument was removed from its pedestal by order of the Moscow City Council. Since 1992, the monument has been one of the exhibits of the capital’s Muzeon Park.

The topic of returning the monument to Dzerzhinsky to Lubyanka Square began to be actively discussed in October 2013. In December 2013, in favor of returning the monument to Lubyanka spoke 45% of Russians. In July 2015, a survey about the arrangement of the square was conducted among Muscovites. Then the option is to return the monument supported 37% of the inhabitants of the capital.

At the same time, during voting on the “Active Citizen” website in February 2021, the majority of Muscovites voted for the installation of a monument to Alexander Nevsky on Lubyanka Square (55%). The option of returning the Dzerzhinsky monument was chosen by 45% of Moscow residents. However, during the voting, the mayor of the capital Sergei Sobyanin reportedthat the Moscow authorities decided “to leave Lubyanka Square as it is for now.”