V. I.

Lenin

75

To:   P. P. MALINOVSKY [1]

Why is it that, contrary to the decision of the C.P.C.
and in spite of unemployment (and in spite of May Day), work has not been begun in Moscow

1) on a proper removal of tsarist monuments?

2) on the removal of tsarist eagles?

3) on preparing hundreds of inscriptions (revolutionary
and socialist) on all public buildings?

4) on setting up busts (if only temporary ones) of
various great revolutionaries?

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Notes:
[1]
Lenin wrote this letter to P. P. Malinovsky, Acting People’s
Commissar for the Properties of the Republic, in connection with
the implementation of the decree of the Council of People’s
Commissars “On the Monuments of the Republic”, adopted on April
12, 1918, = and published on April 14 in Pravda and Izvestia . The
decree set the task of removing monuments to the tsars and their
servants that were of no historical or artistic value, and of
erecting revolutionary monuments. A special commission, consisting
of the People’s Commissar for Education, the People’s Commissar
for the Properties of the Republic and the head of the Fine Arts
Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education, was
instructed to determine which monuments in Moscow and
Petrograd were to be removed, and advised to enlist the services of
artists in designing new, revolutionary monuments. The Council
of People’s Commissars proposed that by May 1 the commission
should have removed the ugliest monuments and submitted the
first models of new monuments, and should also hasten arrangements for replacing old inscriptions, emblems and street names
by new ones reflecting the ideas and sentiments of revolutionary
Russia.

Lenin attached great importance to the implementation of
this decree, the progress of which was discussed at the sittings
of the Council of People’s Commissars on July 8, 17 and 30, 1918.
Lenin repeatedly criticised the heads of the People’s
Commissariats for Education and for the Properties of the Republic, and
the heads of the Moscow Soviet, for the unsatisfactory implementation of the decree (see this volume, Document 109, and present
edition, Vol. 35, documents 171 and 176, pp. 360, 368).