Monument to the letter E

The letter "E" appeared in the Russian alphabet relatively recently. In November 1783, at a meeting of the Academy of Literature, the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, proposed to introduce a letter designation for the combination of sounds “io” in some words. The word “Iolka” was given as an example. And although the proposal was accepted, the print edition appeared only a few years later due to the complexity and high costs. It is believed that Cyril and Methodius did not include the letter "E" in the Russian alphabet, because there was no such sound in the Slavic language. The combination "io" appeared much later as a result of changing the pronunciation of "e" to some foreign words.

Dashkova’s proposal was realized only in 1794 in the work of Ivan Dmitriev “My trinkets” and in the work of Nikolai Karamzin “Aonids”, where in one of the fables the letter “e” appeared for the first time in the word “tears”. And N. Karamzin was a native of the city of Simbirsk, present-day Ulyanovsk, so it was in this city that a monument to this letter was erected. In 2001, the city held a competition for the best project of the monument, and in 2005 its opening took place in front of the building of the Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library in Karamzin Square. It is a triangular pyramid two meters high and weighing more than three tons.