Monument to Mikhail Kutuzov

In front of the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, on Kazanskaya Square, stands a bronze figure of Field Marshal Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov — a monument dedicated to the commander who led the Russian army to victory over Napoleon. Next to Kutuzov's statue stands the paired monument to Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, but each of the two sculptures is an independent work of art with its own creative history.

After Kutuzov's death in 1813, Emperor Alexander I, by a rescript of 23 September 1818, ordered that the commander be commemorated with a monument by the Kazan Cathedral. Sculptors of the Academy of Arts initially refused to take part in the competition: the requirement to depict the commander in contemporary uniform, rather than antique dress as was then customary, proved unacceptable to many. A model commissioned from the German master Eduard Lauchert was rejected as unconvincing. In 1829 Nicholas I announced a new competition, won by the sculptor Boris Orlovsky, who had recently returned from a trip to Rome; in January 1830 he set to work.

Orlovsky portrayed Kutuzov in vigorous motion: the commander, in field marshal's uniform with a cloak thrown over his shoulders, holds a drawn sword in his right hand and a marshal's baton in his left, his foot trampling the banner of the defeated French army lying on the ground. The pedestal of polished granite was made by the stonemason Samson Sukhanov to a design by the architect Vasily Stasov; it bears the inscription "To Field Marshal Prince Kutuzov of Smolensk. 1812." The monument's total height, including the pedestal, exceeds seven and a half metres.

The bronze figure was cast by the founder Vasily Yekimov in 1832, and its installation on the pedestal, under the direction of the architect Konstantin Ton, was completed on 30 May 1837. Both monuments were solemnly unveiled at the end of December that year, the ceremony timed to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the victory in the Patriotic War; members of the imperial family were among those present. Orlovsky himself did not live to see the day — he died eight days before the unveiling. In 1839 cast-iron railings by Ton were installed around the pedestals, later replaced by metal posts with chains.

During the Great Patriotic War the monument remained in its place, and troops marching along Nevsky Prospect saluted it. The sculpture was restored in 1945, 1972 and 2002, its original bronze and the granite of the pedestal preserved almost unchanged since it was first installed.

Today the monument to Kutuzov remains one of the principal symbols of Russia's victory in the war of 1812 and an unchanging part of the ensemble of Kazanskaya Square: the commander's figure is set within the perspective of the cathedral's side portal, as if framed by a monumental picture frame. Together with the paired monument to Barclay de Tolly, it greets thousands of visitors to Nevsky Prospect every day, a reminder of events fateful for the country at the start of the 19th century.