National Identity in Russia from 1961 : Traditions and Deterritorialisation Newsletter N

But the ‘tooth’ does not go unchallenged as Vologda’s most popular meeting place. In fact, public places for congregation reveal a distinction between the literary and Soviet cultures in the town that could have been scripted into the recent (and for the most part bad) Russian film about Soviet rockabillies, Stilyagi. The ‘horse monument’, an affectionate epithet for the memorial to the local poet Konstantin Batyushkov in which the bard is depicted alongside a disproportionately large stallion, is the public meeting place of choice for Vologda’s various sub-cultures - a handful of Goths, punks, and role players. On the other hand, the Soviet tank, which stands, somewhat ironically, on Ulitsa Mira (Peace Street), is apparently better known as the place where women of ‘loose morals’ would, and apparently still do occasionally, congregate. Interestingly however, the local signification of the tank does not appear to have interfered with the Soviet tradition whereby newly-weds would have their photographs taken in front of such military memorials. In student year books from the 1970s and 1980s, photographs of smiling young couples pasted next to the morally ambiguous military vehicle were a regular feature.

For many residents of Petersburg and Moscow, the selection of events worthy of public commemoration in Vologda appears to reflect a desire to edit out the less heroic episodes from local history. Interestingly, the Vologda Gulag is not the only example of collective forgetting in the town; some figures from the recent Soviet past are also missing their memorials. Alexander Yashin, a local writer associated with the controversial ‘village prose’ movement, is, for example, commemorated by a remarkably more modest monument than that of his literary predecessor, Konstantin Batyushkov. (A bus stop in a particularly built-up area of town now bears his name; it should be noted, however, that a museum dedicated to Aleksander Yashin, housed in the twentieth century wooden building where his parents used to live, does exist in the neighbouring town of Nikolsk, also in the Vologda oblast. See the website of the Nikolsk Historical Museum: http://www.museum.ru/m779).