Hanna Hodgetts sheds light upon the afterlife of Mikhail Anikushin’s sculptures

Anikushin leaning on his statue of Chekhov. Image credit: soviet-art.ru

When I arrived in Saint Petersburg, I met an unexpected fellow traveller. His name was Mikhail Anikushin and he had been dead for more than twenty years. I met him through his sculptures, scattered across the centre of Saint Petersburg and I was surprised never to have heard his name before. The first time I saw a sculpture by him was when I took a taxi from the airport to the city centre. I asked my Turkish driver who had made it, but he did not know. A week later, I decided to visit the Russian Museum and stumbled upon the same name on a statue of Pushkin. Back in my apartment, I found the man thanks to the wonderful help of the World Wide Web.

Whenever I have brought up Mikhail Anikushin in conversation with Russians, the reaction has been one of surprise and misunderstanding. Some have heard his name before, but did not know where to place it, others were left in complete desperation. Today, Anikushin is not as well-known as other sculptors of that era such as Vera Mukhina, or Nikolai Tomskii. Nonetheless, he was a respected artist of his time with his own stamps and even a minor planet named after him, ‘3358 Anikushin’. Born in Moscow in the year of the Revolution, Anikushin moved to Peter’s city at an early age. He attended the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1937 until he joined the army in 1941. After returning from the war in 1945, he resumed his studies. In 1947, he began a long and fruitful career, working in his spacious studio on Petrogradskii Island. His style was classical and traditionalist, completely conforming to the wishes of the Soviet regime.

Anikushin’s studio still stands on Petrogradskii island. It was turned into a museum after his death. Many sculptors must have envied Anikushin for such a studio. Built in 1969, it was designed by the architect Philippe Gepner especially to suit the artist’s wishes. The result was a slightly bungalow-like studio with gigantic glass windows, looking out over a large lawn. In the main room, Anikushin made his immense Lenin statue, which still stands on Moscow Square in front of the Dom Sovetov. The smaller rooms on the side are filled with plaster models of Anikushin’s three preferred subjects: Chekhov, Pushkin and Lenin. Especially Pushkin and Chekhov are well-represented: there is a mini-Chekhov leaning on a tree stump, Chekhov in a trench coat accompanied by landscape painter Isaak Levitan, Pushkin sitting on a chair in pensive mood, a bust of Chekhov’s head, Pushkin in standing position, and so on and so forth.

One of Anikushin’s first statues was the Pushkin statue on Arts Square, in front of the Russian museum. It was erected for the 250th anniversary of Leningrad, which took place in 1957, instead of 1953. That year was deemed unsuitable for festivities due to Stalin’s death. The young and little-known sculptor won the competition for a statue on the square with his plan of a nonchalant Pushkin, his right arm stretched out as if to say: ‘I, Aleksandr Sergeyevich, welcome you to Saint Petersburg. Discover and enjoy the wonders of this timeless city. Carpe diem!’. Less flattering comparisons have been made, regarding this sculpture. According to an article for Russian Life, it resembled ‘an inexperienced tenor singing an operatic solo’.

A marvellous myth exists surrounding this sculpture. It is unknown whether the myth was just a rumour, a tactic to increase the statue’s popularity, or the bare truth, though it is indisputably entertaining. If it were to be true, Anikushin clearly did not lack the standard dose of Russian superstition.

On the morning of June 19th, several hours before the dedication of the ceremony, Anikushin was making a few finishing touches on the statue. He climbed up on his bronze creation, but then lost his footing. As he was falling, his jacket caught on the poet’s expressively outstretched arm. Anikushin came to believe that the poet himself had saved his life. Until his dying day, he insisted he felt Pushkin holding on to him, not letting him fall.
— Tamara Eidelman, ‘Pushkin’s Other Square: monumental history’, Russian Life, May/June 2007, p. 23

Anikushin’s statue of Lenin in his studio, 1970. Photo credit: Soviet-Era Pictures

In 1970, Anikushin finished his statue of Lenin, which was planted in the middle of Moscow Square after the completion of the construction of the Moskovskaya metro station. More than any other sculpture by Anikushin, his Lenin statue emits a certain energy or dynamism with its powerful pose and intense look. Germans might say the statue has Schwung. The sculpture is grandiose, dramatic and attests to a certain megalomania. The sheer scale of the monument frightens and makes men look insignificant and powerless. Anikhushin chose the same pose for Lenin as for Pushkin, but this time executed it in a more violent and determinant way. As if stuck in the eye of a storm, Lenin stretches his right index finger to show his comrades the way. His coat blows up in the wind. His eyebrows are folded into a frown. The statue might not comply with today’s taste in art, but one can not deny that the statue once very efficiently served its purpose.

That is not the case anymore today. All Anikushin’s sculptures have one thing in common. The statues have lost their former goal of celebrating and remembering national figures. Their purpose and meaning have changed. Naturally, it is still Pushkin who waves his arm, it is still Chekhov who leans on the tree stump and it is still Lenin looking intensely in the eyes of the spectator, but today form dominates content. The style of Anikushin’s work has become so entangled with the Soviet period that the work itself has become a representative of a time when people still believed in the Soviet cause. And so, the statues are not merely depictions of Pushkin, Lenin and Chekhov, but they have also become memorials of times gone by. Anikushin’s statues evoke a sense of melancholy. They seem lost and misplaced in modern Saint Petersburg. That is the fate of many Soviet sculptures. However, the discrepancy between Soviet and modern times also gives opportunities to advertisers and artists to play with, as this anecdote on Anikushin’s statue of Lenin shows.

Departing from St Petersburg on the airport bus, one passes beneath an advertising banner using the figure of Lenin with the same outstretched hand, gesticulating down to the shoppers below. The language mimics the communist exhortation to the proletarians of the world to unite, but this time around something more prosaic: a furniture sale with a 25% discount.
— Brandon Taylor, ‘Later Soviet Sculpture’, Third Text, Summer 2000, p.50

Despite his diminished popularity, Anikushin’s 100th birthday was celebrated in October 2017. Needless to say, it was overshadowed by the centenary of another event, the October revolution. For that occasion Anikushin’s statue of Lenin was given a good wash. And for the first time in years, his bronze coat floated in the wind, just as it had done in the old days.

Hanna Hodgetts is a third-year student of French and Russian at University College London. Before the pandemic, she studied at the Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg. She has a special interest in Russian films, anything from Eisenstein to Zvyagintsev

Saved by Pushkin Himself: the Remnants of a Half-forgotten Sculptor

Hanna Hodgetts sheds light upon the afterlife of Mikhail Anikushin’s sculptures