Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, remains both a unifying and divisive figure among Russians, and that appears to explain three trends in Russian memorialization: the modesty of the celebration of his day, the rise of statues outside the major cities rather than in them, and the conflation of his image with that of imperial heroes.
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Paul Goble: Russia opens a monument to Dzerzhinsky
A picture taken on Feb. 25, 2021 shows the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Bolshevik leader and head of the first Soviet secret police organization, which is considered part of Russia's cultural heritage, in a park of Soviet monuments in central Moscow.
