Solzhenitsyn Statue Temporarily Returned to Original Vladivostok Site After Relocation Mishap

Authorities in the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok have temporarily returned a controversial monument to Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn to its original location after a failed attempt to relocate it.

The statue was dismantled from the waterfront promenade in central Vladivostok on Tuesday, with plans to place it in a nearby, smaller square.

However, on Wednesday, the Vladivostok city hall’s press service told Interfax that workers realized the statue was too large for the smaller square when attempting to install it there.

“The monument visually overloads the small recreational zone,” a press spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Officials confirmed that the Solzhenitsyn monument will remain at the original Ship Embankment until architects finish modifying the Faith and Hope Square, where it was intended to be moved. They did not provide a timeframe.

Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet Union’s most famous literary dissident who spent years in prison camps before being exiled to the United States, passed through Vladivostok when he returned back to Russia by plane in May 1994.

Some local activists have criticized the statue, which was installed in 2015, for depicting Solzhenitsyn stepping off a ship gangway.

Vladivostok’s city hall had agreed in March to move the Solzhenitsyn monument following complaints from the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet, which argued that a statue dedicated to a Soviet dissident was out of place on a waterfront reserved for World War II memorials and warships.

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