Nikolai Gogoal Monument on Gogolevsky Boulevard
A monument commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of Gogol’s birth had already been raised in 1909. Howver, it was judged “too realistic” and “not conform to the collective representation” that the Russian people had of the writer. Moved in 1951 from Prechistensky Boulevard (now Gogolevsky) to Donskoy Monsatery, it is now located on Nikitsky Boulevard where the author lived from 1848 to his death.
In 1952, the Soviet government launched a competition so as to erect immediately another statue where the older one used to stand so as to commemorate, this time, the hundredth anniversary of his Nikolai Gogol’s death.
It is sculptor Niklai Vasilievich Tomsky’s project that was chosen. The statue engraved “To the great Russian word-painter Nikolai Vasilievich Gogoal from the Soviet Union Government on March 2, 1952” was initially part of bigger ensemble but today only the statue and street lamps remain.