ABSTRACT
August 1991: it did not take long after the hardliners' coup failed and Gorbachev resurfaced from Crimean detainment - a mere matter of days - for the statues to topple. The massive effigies of Lenin and Stalin, Khrushchev and Dzerzhinsky soon lay in still-massive ruins which citizens inspected and the press services photographed. Their prints were wired westward without delay, so that we, at our breakfast tables, could have an imagery of revolution appropriate to the momentous political news. We needed pictures both of men manhandling statues and the resultant rubble to give the circumstances their proper historical form. And if we could not remember or never knew that such events have proper forms - that is, that they have happened before - on-the-spot interviews gave us the facts, and more: "The bemedaled grandfather ... turned thoughtful. 'No, I can't say this is good,' he said .... 'We trashed the old statues, now we've trashed these, then we'll be trashing the next ones. There's got to be a better way' " (Schmemann 1991: A7).
