Stalin's Monument (Prague)

Stalin's Monument was a massive granite statue honoring Joseph Stalin that was unveiled in 1955 after more than 5½ years of work in Prague, Czech Republic. It was the world's largest representation of Stalin, and was destroyed in 1962.

The Monument was located on a huge concrete pedestal, which can still be visited in Letná Park. It was the largest group statue in Europe, measuring 15.5 meters in height and 22 metres in length. The sculptor was Otakar Švec, who, under pressure from the government and secret police while receiving hate mail from Czech citizens, killed himself three weeks before the unveiling.

The process of de-Stalinization began shortly after the unveiling of the monument. The monument, therefore, became an increasing source of embarrassment to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and was taken down with 800 kg of explosives.

In 1990, pirate radio station Radio Stalin operated from a bomb shelter beneath the statue's plinth. The same shelter was also the home of Prague's first rock club in the early 1990s. Since 1991 the marble pedestal has been used as the base of a giant kinetic sculpture of a metronome. In 1996 the pedestal was briefly used as a base for a 35 foot tall statue of Michael Jackson as a promotional stunt for the start of his HIStory European tour. A billboard promoting Civic Democratic Party leader Václav Klaus was erected on the site during the Czech parliamentary elections of 1998 but was removed soon after due to high winds.

A green plaque below the metronome reads:

Metronome
Letenské sady
The Metronome, the work of sculptor
Vratislav Karel Novák, was erected in1991 atop the massive stone plinth thatoriginally served as the basefor the monument to Soviet leader JosefVissarionovich Stalin.Work began on Prague's Stalin monumenttowards the end of 1949, and in May 1955,it was finally unveiled. The largest groupsculpture in Europe during its existence,the monument had a reinforced-concretestructure faced with 235 granite blocks,weighing 17,000 tonnes and costing140 million crowns to complete.The gigantic composition, by sculptor
Otakar Švec and the architects Jiříand Vlasta [his wife] Štursa, did not tower for longover the medieval center of Prague:in connection with Soviet criticismof Stalin's "cult of personality," the workwas dynamited and removed towards the endof 1962.

The City of Prague is considering several options for redevelopment of the site, including a plan to build an aquarium.

ee also

*Stalin Monument in Budapest
*Socialist realism

External links

* [http://www.radio.cz/en/article/66095 Article showing former Stalin monument]
* [http://www.nubianlink.com/gallery/jack25.htm Image of the Michael Jackson statue]