Memorial to the Victims of Political Repression () in Saint Petersburg is a monument dedicated to millions of people who suffered from state terror in the USSR. It is located at the descent to the water on the Voskresenskaya Embankment of the Neva River, separating it from the legendary Kresty Prison, where many political prisoners were held. The central element of the monument is a pair of sculptures of "metaphysical sphinxes" by artist Mihail Chemiakin. Executed in the spirit of modernism, they feature - their faces are divided vertically into two halves. Facing the residential buildings on the embankment, the sphinxes have profiles of young female faces, and facing the Kresty prison on the opposite bank are exposed skulls. This symbolizes the tragic division of the people during the Soviet years. Around the perimeter of the sculpture pedestals are plaques with texts dedicated to Soviet repression, written by famous writers and dissidents. Between the sphinxes is a structure made of granite blocks in the form of an early Christian cross with a prison window and a crown of thorns made of barbed wire. The architectural solution of the monument was designed by and Anatoly Vasiliev. The memorial was opened at the initiative of the sculptor and city authorities on April 28, 1995.

Structure and symbolism "Metaphysical Sphinxes" The central element of the monument to the victims of political repression is a pair of bronze sculptures, "metaphysical sphinxes", which are mirror-symmetrically created by the artist Mikhail Shemyakin. They represent somewhat deformed figures of legendary creatures from the ancient world, with the body of a lion and the head and chest of a woman. The sphinxes lie on two granite pedestals with raised heads. Their bodies are emaciated, with ribs protruding on the animal torsos, thin necks exaggeratedly and anxiously stretched, and below, at the junction of the lion and human parts, expressive female breasts are located. The heads of the sphinxes are crowned with stylized ancient Egyptian headscarves, "nemes", and crowns, "pschents". The main feature of Shemyakin's creatures is their faces: they are divided vertically into two halves. Facing the residential buildings on the embankment, the sphinxes present profiles of youthful female faces, while facing the Neva and the Kresty prison on the opposite bank are exposed skulls. Thus, one side is perceived as living, beautiful, with sensually rising ribs, while the other is seen as dead, decaying, with the bones of a skeleton protruding on the corpse.

Voskresenskaya Embankment: Kresty and Sphinx View along the embankment View of the Cavalry Regiment Barracks Michail Shemyakin describes the symbolic significance of sculptures as follows: "The faces of the sphinxes are an embodiment of a cruel regime... This reflects the life of the country - one half lived in ignorance, while the others perished, it's unclear for what". As noted by critic Tatiana Voltskaya, "two-faced images symbolize life and death, freedom and slavery, as well as the duality of human nature, capable of rising to spiritual heights, as well as descending to mass murders and the destruction of entire peoples". According to poet and critic Viktor Krivulin, the sphinxes represent "the boundary between the living and the dead". Philologist and art historian Dmitry Likhachev saw in the sculptures the "face of the era", whose dead side embodies repression and their victims, while the living side represents secret resistance to them, the courage and hopes of Soviet dissidents. He denoted the pairing of figures as a symbol of the rift in Russian society, civil confrontations, and war, the division of Rus into the "ordinary" and the "oprichnina" (). Mikhail Shemyakin, who often explored the theme of the "cosmic-omniscient masquerade" and the mask of death as its central component, according to Victor Krivulin, introduced into the monument "elements of a certain modern tragic travesty and seemingly exposed the bloody-carnival underpinning of the idea of tyrannical power, the subconscious nature of dictatorship, which pushed a large part of Russia to the brink of life and death". Art historian Mikhail Zolotonosov noted the plastic expressiveness and meaningfulness of the sculptures of sphinxes, seeing in them "the concept of death, greedily and eagerly rushing upon a person, desiring him, full of eternal thirst for life". Researcher Alexander Etkind noted that the anthropo-zoomorphic images of Shemyakin's sphinxes are a rare example of an attempt to concretize the image in the poor Russian iconography of monuments to victims of political repression. He considered this monument a metaphor for passive suffering, the inability to resist evil and terror, which seem inevitable when faced with monsters, like death itself, and that it is very generalized and does not give an idea of the specific history of repression: about resistance, camp uprisings, torture, cruelty, violence, ideological underpinnings, and so on. Historian Anatoly Khazanov characterized the monument as a rare example of "exciting", expressive plasticity of the memorial to victims of state terror. Human rights activist Veniamin Iofe saw in the sphinxes a self-reflection of the authorities, "obvious tension of thought and desire to penetrate into the state subconscious", personification of guards-executioners and dictatorship.

The artist-postmodernist Mikhail Shemyakin proclaimed in his work the principle of "metaphysical synthesis", which involved the creation of new forms and iconography based on the study of cult art from various countries and epochs. "Metaphysical sphinxes" are reinterpreted images of their ancient Egyptian counterparts, installed on the University Embankment in St. Petersburg. In Ancient Egypt, such sculptures were part of the cult of the pharaoh, revered as a god and possessing unlimited power. At the same time, they were attributed mystical protective functions. Art historians see parallels between the sphinxes and Soviet Russia with its totalitarian dictatorship, cults of personalities like Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev, mass slave labor, and repression.

At the same time, Shemyakin's sphinx iconography includes an ancient interpretation. According to the myths of Ancient Greece, a creature in the form of a half-woman, half-lion was sent by the gods as punishment to the inhabitants of Thebes in Boeotia. The Sphinx ambushed travelers, posed them clever riddles, and killed those who couldn't solve them. Only Oedipus managed to solve the riddle, causing the creature to throw itself from a cliff in disappointment, leading Oedipus to become the king of Thebes but also opening the path to his tragic fate. The ancient sphinx image, inherited by modern art, found reflection in the works of Alexander Blok. In his poem "Scythians," written after the communist revolution, the poet declares: "Russia is the Sphinx! Rejoicing and mourning, // And bathed in black blood, // She looks, looks, looks at you // With hatred, and with love!.." Critics interpret Shemyakin's sphinxes as a metaphor for the state destroying its people.

"The Sphinx Road" The Sphinx on Universitetskaya embankment, 17XIV century BC The Sphinxes on the Malaya Nevka embankment, 111826. Pavel Sokolov Sphinx's Kiss 1895. Franz von Stuck Triumph of the Sphinx 1886. Gustave Moreau "Sphinxes" shishi on Petrovskaya embankment, 6 beg. 20 century Sphinxes on Sverdlovskaya embankment, 401773-1777, restored 1959–1960, architect. A. L. Rotach

Art historian Dmitry Likhachyov characterized Shemyakin's sphinxes as a continuation of the "sphinx road" on the banks of the Neva River in St. Petersburg. According to him, it starts with the sphinxes on University Embankment, located opposite Senate Square, where the Decembrist Uprising occurred in 1825, foreshadowing the empire's future collapse. The chain continues with the Chinese shishi placed near the last palace of the Romanovs after the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution (these events heralded the communist revolution). The third pair is located on Kamenny Island, next to buildings serving the Soviet party elite, marking the tragedy of Soviet Russia. Shemyakin's sphinxes, dedicated to the victims of repression and installed opposite the dreadful Kresty prison, conclude this tragic path. According to Likhachyov, the monument "simultaneously represents its era and interprets it in historical perspective".

In the work of the postmodernist artist Mikhail Shemyakin (and in the specific case of "metaphysical sphinxes"), art historians note the influence of Russian ("World of Art") and German (Franz von Stuck, Max Klinger) modernism, particularly symbolism and surrealism. These sculptures are also an example of contemporary Egyptian revival. Shemyakin's sphinxes not only break with the tradition of Soviet monumental sculpture but also stand apart from contemporary avant-garde monuments.

The figures of the sphinxes are proportionate to human height, the height of the sculpture is 1.5 meters, and the dimensions of its pedestal are 2.3 × 0.8 × 1.8 meters. According to Viktor Krivulin, such a size of the figures, which somewhat does not correspond to the scale of the embankment, was a deliberate gesture of rejecting megalomania in favor of humanizing the monument's image..

Design

The architectural design of the monument was executed by Vyacheslav Bukhaev and Anatoly Vasilyev. The memorial is situated in front of the descent to the water on the Voskresenskaya Embankment of the Neva. The sculptures on the pedestals stand slightly apart from its granite parapet. The distance between the sphinxes facing each other is fifteen meters. In the middle of the embankment's parapet, there is a structure made of four granite blocks, which are arranged in such a way as to form the shape of an early Christian cross with a small hole in the center. This stylized prison window is covered with a lattice in the form of a thin iron cross. Through it, the viewer's gaze is focused on the "Kresty" prison located on the opposite bank of the Neva. The inscription "To the Victims of Political Repression" is carved on the upper block. A wreath made of barbed wire, a kind of crown of thorns, is attached to the lower one. A fifth block is attached to the parapet underneath, on which lies a closed book (either the Soviet Penal Code or a list of victims). This structure is perceived by critics as a peculiar allegory of prison and faith. Between the sphinxes and the embankment, a cross made of paving stones is laid out, its ends oriented towards three elements of the monument's composition. The number of stones in it, according to the authors' intention, corresponds to the number of repressed individuals in the USSR — ten thousand victims per stone. Researcher Alexander Etkind notes that the symbolism of the cross is one of the most common in the iconography of monuments to victims of political repression in Russia: this language allows expressing grief for the killed (although it does not reveal the circumstances of death and crime).

Location