Free Gottland: Mostly True Stories From Half of Czechoslovakia by Mariusz Szczygieł Page A

influence of a couple of bottles of vodka. He is a decent man, so he deliberately plagiarizes a well-known pre-war idea for a statue of Miroslav Tyrš, a bourgeois public benefactor whom the communists don’t like.
    Unfortunately, he wins.
    Stalin is standing at the head of a group of people. In one hand, he holds a book, and he rests the other hand on his chest, under his coat.
    On the left—Soviet—side, Stalin is followed by a worker holding a flag, then an agrobiologist, then a female partisan and finally a Soviet soldier who is looking round behind him.
    On the right—Czechoslovak—side of Stalin comes: a worker with a flag, a woman from the countryside, a scientist and a Czechoslovak soldier also looking backwards.
    Some people start to whisper boldly that “there’s Stalin with everyone crawling up his ass.”
    Just one of his buttons—they say—will be the size of a loaf of bread.
    The monument will be one hundred feet high, and Stalin fifty feet wide, altogether the size of a ten-story pre-war building. His foot alone will be over six feet long.
    The whole thing, made of granite (not at all suitable for sandstone Prague, but unlike sandstone, granite lasts for centuries) is to stand on Letná hill and provide competition for the castle. Its vast scale is to crush the past. It will be visible from the Old Town Square, and will stand on the other side of Čechův Bridge, across the river from the top of Pařížská Street.
    To make a Stalin of this kind, 260 blocks of granite are needed, each well over six feet by six feet by six feet in size.
    The fact that a quarry is found with thick enough walls from which to cut out such large blocks of stone of exactly the same color is little short of a miracle.
    The two architects helping Švec—a married couple called Štursa—have to devise a way to prepare the weak sandstone hill for this colossus.
    They decide that the hill will be filled from the inside with gigantic blocks of concrete, which will form something like underground halls.
    Two years after the competition is announced, people start to voice their concerns about the statue. Švec’s sketches, modelsand drawings are exhibited to the citizens for their consultation, and a debate is held about “Prague’s new jewel.”
    “I’m worried that from a distance the figures will merge into one and Stalin won’t be sufficiently visible.”
    “Why are the last figures in line looking backwards? I find that too avant-garde,” people say, as the doubts increase.
    “They’re looking back for ideological reasons,” replies Švec. “It’s to do with the guarantee of living in peace, it’s about defense. They’re also looking round for compositional reasons, so the monument will have a nice view from the back, not the rear end of a soldier.”
    “Why as an artist do you want to defend our people on the monument, comrade?”
    “A rearguard defense is necessary so that the people in the vanguard can feel calm,” explains the sculptor.
    Later on, people will say that the figures behind Stalin are standing in line for meat.
    Many citizens are still implacable. “As a symbol, we find the monument disturbing. It’s not a joyful, faithful depiction, but instead looks like a tombstone,” four people who signed the exhibition visitors’ book noted.
    “Whom is Comrade Stalin leading? The people are literally creeping after him as if they’re up against a wall. The design should be torn up and a new competition announced.”
    “The monument will be in bad taste. More care should be devoted to the depiction of one of the greatest giants in history.”
    Otakar Švec doesn’t yet know that he is a prisoner.
    •   •   •
    The models posing for the monument were apparently extras from the Barrandov Film Studios.
    Later, it was said that the man who posed as Stalin drank himself to death. Nobody knew his name, but the whole of Prague called him “Stalin,” and his psyche couldn’t take it.
    Švec