Ekh, Lubyanka...
Dear Liquidator Dimitri, here another scene of Iron Felix's Glorious Ascension to the Heaven of Next Tuesday™:
The time/space coordinates being November 1989 and the capital of those Slavs who call themselves
Pan and
Pani.
By jolly Nagant, Iron Felix was one of them! Pan Feliks Dzierżyński, as they most equally korrekt call him. A nobleman, no less, such an (ex-)burzhuikulak. They didn't nickname him
Железный Феликс, Iron Felix, here - no no, they dubbed him
Czerwony Kat, Red Hangman.
[center]FELIKS DZIERŻYŃSKI[/center][center]THE PRIDE OF THE POLISH[/center][center]REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT[/center][/color]
Mystery item No. 1 The above pic is from the 70s. The nice structure behind: once Chancellor's residence of the 17th century, in early 19th century rebuilt to a neoclassicist palace complex (and think the streetlights away, they are socrealism of the 50s). Initially, the Ministry of Revenues and Treasury was placed here - and so the spacious location was called Plac Bankowy, the Bank Square.
... History rolling, thundering, shining, then hitlering, finally stalining over here ...
1951/52, an offer the locals couldn't refuse (just one of a plethora of such offers): a glorious statue - gift of the brotherly USSR! - will be put here, Iron Felix on a pedestal, and Bank Square will become Plac Dzierżyńskiego, Dzerzhinsky Square. Period.
... History rolling ...
1989: Iron Felix, as shown in the opening, ascends to The Eternal Katorga Field For The Glorious Cause. And now it's Bank Square again.
These days, comrade Googlator appears stunningly history-aware.
Given a tiny depiction of the glorious ascend, Googlator discerns:
2001: A monument to Juliusz Słowacki (Poles' poet "№ 2") placed here.
.
Hide it back (Turn mouse upside down and click. If that doesn't work, try standing on your head)
Red Hangman getting ready to blast off:
(a register of
syegodnyye rasstryely - today's shooting executions - still firmly in grip)
Surprise, surprise:
Turned out, the supposedly cast-bronze effigy was actually cast in concrete, thinly coated with a bronze skin, and so it crumbled already in air (head plus shoulders also came off, in one piece)...
Stashed in the junkyard of Warsaw's Road Administration,
Iron Concrete Felix slowly rotted away until - near 3 decades later, in 2018 - the remains of the statue were turned
( [OFF] and korrektly so! [ON] ) to the Museum of Polish History. Nicely documented in 0:46
here.
Plus a nostalgic flashback to 1936 (or is it a prophetic outlook to 2025?):
and he added:
Da da, Kancyel Kultura - coming out of the barrel of my Nagant.