Monument to Nikolai Gogol on Malaya Konyushennaya Street

On the pedestrian Malaya Konyushennaya Street, just a few steps from Nevsky Prospect, stands a bronze figure of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol — one of the monuments dedicated to the writer whose prose is forever bound up with the image of Petersburg's streets. The location was not chosen by chance: it is Nevsky Prospect itself that is the subject of one of Gogol's famous stories, and the monument returns the author to the very place where its action unfolds.

The decision to commemorate the writer in Leningrad was made as early as 1952, on the centenary of his death: a memorial stone was laid on Manezhnaya Square. However, every project submitted for the competitions announced at the time was rejected one after another, and the unveiling of the monument was postponed for decades. The idea received fresh impetus only in 1996, when the city authorities decided to turn Malaya Konyushennaya into a pedestrian zone: the public association "Nevsky Prospekt Club" proposed installing a figure of the writer here. The sculpture was entrusted to Mikhail Belov, who had already been working on the image of Gogol while a postgraduate student at the Repin Institute; the architectural design was the work of Vladimir Vasilkovsky.

The bronze statue was cast at the "Monumentskulptura" plant, the pedestal was carved from a granite monolith quarried near Vyborg, and the wrought-iron railing and lamps around the monument were made by craftsmen of the firm "Aspekt" — the figure itself is 3.4 metres tall, the pedestal one and a half metres. The sculptor portrayed the writer wrapped in a long cloak, arms crossed over his chest and his gaze lowered in thought — a pose that echoes the mood of his story about Nevsky Prospect. The monument is surrounded by four wrought-iron lamps and a low ornamental railing. On the front of the pedestal the writer's name is carved in gilded letters, while on the reverse are listed the organizations and citizens whose donations made it possible to complete the work.

The solemn unveiling of the monument took place on 8 December 1997, forty-five years after the original decision to erect it. Sergei Astapov and Alexander Ananyev also took part in creating the sculpture. The monument is tied to a well-known city legend: that the bronze Gogol's facial features resemble those of a Saint Petersburg criminal boss of the late 20th century, and that the figure's position, facing the Kazan Cathedral, was interpreted as a hidden allusion to the standoff between criminal gangs of that era. There is no documentary confirmation of this version, but the legend has firmly entered city folklore.

Today the monument is part of the pedestrian route along Malaya Konyushennaya Street, which links Nevsky Prospect with the Griboyedov Canal; nearby are the metro stations "Nevsky Prospekt" and "Gostiny Dvor." The site features in city tours and remains a point of attraction for tourists.

The monument to Gogol on Malaya Konyushennaya is a rare case in Saint Petersburg where a monument conceived in the mid-20th century took physical form only at its very end. It commemorates not only the writer but also the literary topography of the city, where the pages of Gogol's prose are inseparable from its streets.