On the night of Aug. 22, 1991, several construction cranes and a crowd of about 50,000 determined people gathered in central Moscow to seal that promise of something better than Soviet misery. In front of the sinister KGB building, workers rocked, cracked and then toppled the formidable statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky. This is the man who in 1917 founded the Cheka, the "Extraordinary Commission" that terrorized the nation with the arrests and brutal executions that became known as the Red Terror. This invention was the precursor of the KGB, the vast and brutal secret police and spy network that stood as a symbol of barbarism in the 20th century. The statue of "Iron Feliks" was relegated to an undistinguished patch of land behind the New Tretyakov Gallery. The "monster's graveyard" was a tourist attraction for Westerners, who enjoyed the sight of the scattered commissars, including Comrade Dzerzhinsky lying on his back, his steely glare aimed at nothing more than the gray Russian sky.
Earlier this month, with little fanfare but plenty of dreary symbolism, Dzerzhinsky was returned to a position of honor in central Moscow. It is nothan the gray Russian sky.
Earlier this month, with little fanfare but plenty of dreary symbolism, Dzerzhinsky was returned to a position of honor in central Moscow. It is not the same statue, and not the same site. Instead, Iron Feliks is a few blocks away at the Interior Ministry, his bronze bust back on a pedestal in the new Russian society.
