The Cobblestone Memorial: The Weapons of the Proletariat

In the year of the 50th anniversary of October, a large memorial complex began to take shape, dedicated to the memory of the first Russian revolution and the December armed uprising of 1905, on Krasnaya Presnya. In the park named after 1905 was built a memorial "Cobblestone - the weapon of the proletariat" in memory of the heroes of the uprising. A bronze sculpture of a worker breaking a stone from a cobblestone pavement to use as a weapon is mounted on a low granite slab, against a wall lined with light gray granite. The inscription on the wall bears the famous words of Lenin: "The feat of the Presnen workers was not lost in vain." Their sacrifices were not in vain.” The magnificent sculptural composition is a copy of the famous work of I.D. Shadr, created in 1925-1927 and stored in the Tretyakov Gallery. This work can rightfully be considered not only a masterpiece of Russian sculpture of the Soviet period, but also one of the most striking phenomena of realistic art of the XX century. A dynamic composition, based on the drawing - a round of unwinding spiral; expressive rigid and very embossed plastic body; expressive portrait, conveying the state of dramatic spiritual uplift, concentration of spiritual and physical energy; finally, a purely realistic interpretation of the image in all its details serve to create a heroic image that does not pretend to be a global generalization, but symbolizes a specific historical era. Without exception, critics noted the high artistic merits of Shadr’s work, the perfection of the plastic skill of the sculptor. M.V. Nesterov rightly noted that the author managed to combine into an inseparable whole "the beauty of the spirit with the eternal beauty of form", as the great masters of the Renaissance knew how to do it. The complex contour of the bronze figure is clearly and effectively read against the background of strict architectural elements (architects M.N. Kazarnovsky and L.N. Matyushin).