Lenin’s plan of monumental propaganda: Representation of the ideas of the Revolution within the framework of the Art Nouveau Style on the example of the obelisk of Freedom by N.A. Andreev

The adoption of the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On the Monuments of the Republic” on April 12, 1918, set before artists the task of promoting the ideas of the revolution through the erection of monuments. The Monument to the Soviet Constitution, unveiled on the eve of the first anniversary of the October Revolution, was among the earliest works made under this project. This article reconstructs the stages of the monument’s creation, with a focus on the complex iconography of the figure of Freedom designed by Nikolai Andreev. It offers a retrospective examination of art-historical assessments of Andreev’s Statue of Freedom, which in Soviet scholarship tended toward an interpretation aligned with Realism. A formal stylistic analysis is undertaken, making it possible to attribute the work to the Art Nouveau style. The article substantiates the hypothesis that a combination of factors led to the decision to demolish the monument in April 1941, including political and ideological considerations (a paradigm shift), artistic factors (the incompatibility of the Art Nouveau stylistics with the aims of the new Soviet culture), and philosophical ones (the incongruity of the idea of “freedom”, imported by the Bolsheviks from the experience of the Great French Revolution, with the Soviet public opinion).

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