Monument to Gabdulla Tukay

At the intersection of Kronverksky Prospekt and Zverinskaya Street, in a small park named after the poet, stands a bronze figure of Gabdulla Tukay — a classic of Tatar literature, a critic, publicist and translator who lived a short life at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The monument appeared in a historic area of the Petrograd Side long associated with the city's Tatar community, dating back to the time of Peter the Great, and it became one of the few monuments in Russia to a national poet erected outside Tatarstan.

The site for the monument was not chosen at random: in the early eighteenth century, yurts of Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars, brought in to build the new capital, stood near the Kronverk of the Peter and Paul Fortress — the area was known as the Tatar Encampment, giving its name to the nearby Tatarsky Lane. Almost three centuries later, a small park was laid out on this spot and a monument erected to a poet whose work has long entered school curricula and cultural life, not only in Tatarstan but among the Tatar diaspora across the country.

The sculptors Akhnaf Ziyakaev and Jan Neiman, working from surviving photographs, achieved a strong likeness to the poet; the landscaping design for the park was developed by Stanislav Odnovalov. Tukay is depicted full-length, wearing a coat and skullcap, his left hand pressed to his chest and a book in his right; the bronze figure, about two and a half metres tall, stands on a granite pedestal. The upper part of the pedestal is decorated with high reliefs based on the poet's works — the tales "Shurale" and "Su Anasy", as well as a fable about a boastful hare.

The monument was unveiled on 25 June 2006, timed to the 120th anniversary of Tukay's birth. A delegation from Kazan arrived for the ceremony, headed by Farid Mukhametshin, Chairman of the State Council of Tatarstan; it included Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the republic Zilya Valeeva, and Chairman of the Union of Writers of Tatarstan Ilfak Ibragimov, while performing arts groups from the republic gave presentations for those gathered. The city budget allocated around ten million roubles for landscaping the park and installing the monument. According to one account, in the spring of 1912, while travelling the route Kazan–Ufa–St Petersburg, the poet may have visited this area.

Today the park with the monument is included among the sites of the city's "Multicultural St Petersburg" project, which tells of the contribution of various peoples to the city's history, and it remains a gathering point for the St Petersburg Tatar community, who assemble here on dates significant to the poet's memory. This small park on the Petrograd Side is a rare example of an urban space devoted entirely to the memory of a national poet of one of Russia's peoples.

Tukay died at only twenty-six, yet he had already become the founder of the modern Tatar literary language, and his name has long reached far beyond Kazan. The St Petersburg monument is not only a tribute to the classic poet but also a reminder of the Tatar settlement that stood on this site three centuries ago, and, at the same time, evidence of the city on the Neva's multi-ethnic past and present.