Vlad the Great, hint-hint VLADIMIR PUTIN has a new neighbor: a 16-metre-tall bronze monument to Vladimir the Great, a tenth-century Slav prince. The statue stands just outside the Kremlin’s red walls. “In Soviet times it would have been Lenin,” says the sculptor, Salavat Shcherbakov.
The monument’s backers claim it commemorates the thousand-year anniversary of Vladimir’s death in 2015, but the political subtext is clear. The proto-state which Vladimir ruled was based in Kiev (it is known as Kievan Rus), and Ukraine sees him as its founding father. His face adorns Ukraine’s hryvnia note, and another monument to him already towers over the Dnieper river, where he baptised his people into the Orthodox faith. (He supposedly first rejected Judaism, Catholicism and Islam, telling Muslim envoys who demanded abstinence that “drinking is the joy of the Rus.”) Russia’s leaders, in turn, see the prince as the progenitor of modern Russia. “He’s our prince,” says Mr Shcherbakov.
Critics call the monument a crude gesture of Russian dominance. “It’s plain for all to see that Prince Vladimir is actually President…
The Economist: Europe
