Authors

Bartłomiej Gajos¹;  ¹ Mieroszewski Centre, Poland

Discussion

The Bolsheviks' politics of memory aimed at the tsarist legacy and the Orthodox Church provoked reactions among Russian society and political leaders from the first days of the October Revolution. Their actions became fodder for gossip about the unveiling of the Judas Iscariot monument in the city of Sviyazhsk in the summer of 1918. Paradoxically, the whole event did not gain popularity during the Civil War. The story of alleged monument became widely known only in the Interwar period thanks to the Danish writer and diplomat Henning Keller, author of 'Russiske kroniker' (Kjøbenhavn 1920). In my presentation I will focus on determining where and when these rumors might have first appeared, and what reality those who repeated the gossip about the monument to Judas Iscariot wanted to construct.