Past
How did the monument to Peter the Great in Antwerp come about?
Olga Iakovlevskaya
I came to Antwerp at the very beginning of the 1990s from the disintegrating Soviet Union, where new institutions of power were still being formed and the values and ideas of the new Russia were emerging. In those years, there were very few Russian speakers in Antwerp, and there was no-one to rely on.
In 1995, I opened Artgroup International, a non-profit organisation whose work contributed to the establishment of cultural and educational ties between Antwerp and St. Petersburg, and later between Flanders, Belgium and Russia. We came up with more than 40 projects, and the monument to Peter the Great in Antwerp was one of them.
The idea to show the Belgians another Russia was born in the 90s, at a time when one putsch in Moscow was followed by another, and the news from there was only about lawlessness and poverty. But I knew that my native country was also different: modern, educated, open to co-operation and cultural exchange.
I started searching for a symbol that Antwerp residents would associate Russia with, apart from the traditional ‘vodka, matryoshka doll, Perestroika’. So, in conversations with the townspeople, the image of Peter the Great emerged, which began the official relations between the two countries.
And immediately everything came together: Antwerp is a twin of St. Petersburg, the city where I was born, and Peter himself was in Antwerp in 1717. This is how the project of the festival came into being, within the framework of which the monument by Georgi Fragulian was unveiled on 7 October 1998.
The monument stands on the spot where Peter set foot in 1717. The opening ceremony was attended by the Minister-President of Flanders, Luc Van den Brande, and the Mayor of Antwerp, Leona Detiège.
Peter became an equal citizen of Antwerp. Scouts tie him in his uniform tie, feminists wear an apron, environmentalists blindfold him, and someone breaks champagne on the monument on New Year’s Eve.
Today Peter has a new life – spontaneously it became the site of the Alexei Navalny memorial, where everyone can lay flowers and light a candle to honour the politician’s memory and express support for democracy.
This memorial has been live for three months now. If there are people who need it so much that they continue to support the memorial, then the time has come for a new project to be born. Today, the appearance of Navalny Square is as significant to me as the installation of the monument to Peter the Great in 1998.
