Column of Glory

In front of the Trinity Cathedral, on the square of the same name in St Petersburg, stands the Column of Glory — a monument to the Russian army's victory in the war against the Ottoman Empire of 1877–1878. It is a rare example of a monument that was completely destroyed in the 20th century and then, seven decades later, recreated in almost its original form.

The monument was erected in 1886 to a design by architect David Grimm, with the cast-iron work carried out by the Saint-Galli foundry; construction cost the treasury 200,000 roubles. The ceremonial unveiling on 12 October 1886 was conducted personally by Emperor Alexander III. The column was intended to commemorate specific battles of the war — from the crossing of the Danube to the storming of Kars — and the regiments that took part in the campaign.

The 28-metre column was assembled from five tiers of captured Turkish cannon, topped by a figure of the goddess of victory holding a laurel wreath aloft. The pedestal, about six and a half metres high, was decorated on all four sides with bronze plaques: the eastern face told of the crossing of the Danube and the Treaty of San Stefano, the western face of the fall of Plevna and the Battle of Shipka, the northern face of the fighting on the European theatre of the war, and the southern face of the capture of Kars and Ardagan on the Caucasian front. On either side of the monument stood columns made of captured guns, with individual trophy cannon placed around it on granite pedestals.

The monument's fate proved dramatic: in 1925 the Bolsheviks considered replacing the column with a monument to the Decembrists, and in January 1930, on the eve of a visit to the USSR by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the entire memorial complex was dismantled and melted down. In 1969 a bust of Vasily Stasov, the architect of the Trinity Cathedral, was installed on the vacated site to mark the bicentenary of his birth. In 2004 the bust was moved to temporary storage at the Museum of Urban Sculpture so that the lost monument to military glory could be restored on the square: replicas of the historic cannon were cast at the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine, and on 1 October 2005 the recreated column was unveiled once again in front of the cathedral. The Stasov bust returned nearby, to the boulevard by house No. 7 on Izmailovsky Prospekt, in November 2013.

Today the Column of Glory, together with the Trinity Cathedral, shapes the historic appearance of the square and serves as a reminder of the Russian army's 19th-century victories in the Balkans and the Caucasus. The recreated monument precisely repeats the form and composition of the lost original, although the cannon on it are modern replicas rather than genuine war trophies.

The column's history shows how the state's attitude toward war memorials changed over the course of a century: from a triumphant unveiling under the emperor, to ideologically motivated demolition, to the later restoration of historical justice. Today the monument remains one of the few precise reconstructions in the city of a memorial destroyed during the Soviet years.