On May 5, a monument to poet Alexander Pushkin and his great grandfather Hannibal was opened in Vilnius Lithuania. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Pavel Lavrinets, head of the Russian Philology Department at Vilnius University. We spoke with him about this event and the Pushkin families’ ties to the city of Vilnius.
– What significance does this monument have for the city of Vilnius and its residents?
– All monuments are an expression of the values held by the given society, state or group of people. This symbol of such values plays a big role: this is the manner in which it is materially expressed in the cityscape.
With the change in the state elite and state structure, attitudes toward monuments also change: some are taken down, and others are erected. For example, on Kudirka Square in Vilnius there was a monument to Ivan Chernyakhovsky [the Soviet army commander who freed Vilnius of Nazi occupation – tr.], who represented a particular ideology. After Lithuania became independent, that monument was taken down and just recent a monument to the author of the Lithuania’s national anthem, Vincas Kudirka, was put up. Incidentally, as far as I know, he never lived in Vilnius and had no ties to the city.
Pushkin, of course, also never came to Vilnius, but at least his children served here and his daughter-in-law owned the Marku
