The Federal Penitentiary Service did not keep track of Akhmatova
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The literary community of St. Petersburg turned to the governor of the city Alexander Beglov with a request to restore the memorial plaque to the poetess Anna Akhmatova, stolen by unknown people from the building of the former pre-trial detention center “Crosses”. The appeal on behalf of colleagues was sent by the writer, State Duma deputy Sergei Shargunov. However, the city committee on culture argues that this board “does not stand on the balance sheet” of St. Petersburg. As Kommersant found out, its installation many years ago was a private initiative of employees of the city UFSIN.
Writer, State Duma deputy from the Communist Party Sergei Shargunov sent two requests on Monday on behalf of the “literary community of St. Petersburg.” He told Governor Alexander Beglov that last week “unidentified people dismantled a memorial plaque with a portrait of the Russian poetess Anna Andreevna Akhmatova and lines from her poem Requiem.” Mr. Shargunov pointed out that the sign was installed on the building of the former Kresty prison. “Akhmatova’s son, historian Lev Gumilyov, and her husband, art historian Nikolai Punin, were sitting in this building in the 1930s,” the writer recalled. “I consider it important to preserve cultural and historical memory. I ask you to organize work on the return of the memorial plaque.”
He sent a similar letter to Arkady Gostev, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service.
Reporting the loss of the plate, Mr. Shargunov asked “to provide documents on the approval of the installation of this plate on the facade of the Crosses, or information on the basis of which this plate was installed.”
“In essence, everything is said in the letters,” Sergey Shargunov told Kommersant. “It is impossible to dismantle the memory. If you need help in restoring the board, I will, of course, provide it. In the literary environment, and not only in what happened, many are outraged, including the writer Valery Georgievich Popov, who heads the Writers’ Union of St. Petersburg.
Kommersant also turned to the city authorities with a request about the fate of the memorial plaque. “This tablet is not on the balance sheet of the committee,” the press service of the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg said on Monday. “Therefore, we did not monitor its condition and do not know where it could have gone. Initially, it was someone’s private initiative.” The Federal Penitentiary Service for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region told Kommersant that the memorial plaque was not on the balance sheet of the institution – it “was placed on the initiative of employees at their own expense.”
In “Crosses” they stopped keeping those arrested only in 2017. At the end of May, the land plot and buildings of the Federal Penitentiary Service handed over financial institution for development in the housing sector “Dom.RF”. The press service of Dom.RF reported that the employees did not remove the commemorative plaque.
Earlier, the leader of the Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Boris Vishnevsky, appealed to Governor Alexander Beglov and head of Dom.RF Vitaly Mutko with request to deal with the situation with the loss of the board. He told Kommersant that he still hasn’t received an answer. The deputy added that he did not find any documents about the installation of the sign, but he does not see a problem in this.
“Perhaps this was the initiative of the FSIN employees, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Because it has existed for more than two decades, and we are all used to it. Naturally, no one objected,” Mr. Vishnevsky noted.
He expressed the hope that law enforcement agencies would take his request as a basis for searching for the plate. “History (with the missing plate.— “b”) is dark, but the fact that it hung legally is a fact. This was agreed with the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service. There is hope that she will be found and returned – I do not think that she was kidnapped in order to hide and not show anyone, ”he stressed.
The disappearance of the plaque in memory of Akhmatova is not the first scandal around memorials in memory of the victims of repression. At the beginning of spring in the Perm region demolished a memorial in memory of Lithuanians and Poles sent into exile for logging. The monument was erected by the descendants of the exiles in the cemetery of the abandoned special settlement of Galyashor seven years ago. It is still unknown who exactly destroyed it.
Summer from the facades of buildings in Moscow started to disappear commemorative plaques of the memorial project “Last Address”, dedicated to the victims of repression. The activists of the project do not yet know exactly how many memorial signs have disappeared. Moscow City Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov called what was happening “a planned action by unknown extremist Stalinist organizations” and filed a request with the police.
And last week it became known that unknown people in Yakutsk kidnapped commemorative plaques with the names of Poles who were exiled to the region and became prominent explorers of Yakutia. The municipal authorities are still looking for the organization on whose balance sheet the monument was located.
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