Description of the attraction
The monument "My first teacher" was erected on September 1, 1996 in a public garden, at the intersection of Moskovskaya and Solyanaya streets. The most interesting thing about this seemingly modern monument is its history.
At the beginning of 1911, on Novo-Cathedral Square, opposite the Conservatory, in front of the main entrance to the Lipki Park, a monument to Alexander II was solemnly opened (the author of the monument is S. M. Volnukhin). The composition consisted of four sculptures, symbolizing the main merits of the monarch, and in the middle, on a pedestal, was the tsar-father himself, a reformer. The bronze four included: a peasant-sower blessing his freedom; a kneeling Bulgarian woman with a child, thanking for the liberation from the Turkish yoke; the goddess of justice Themis, sitting on a throne with scales in her hands; and a lady and a girl, bent over a book. The similarity of such a monument can be seen on Stolypin Square, opposite the Radishchev Museum.
The monument to Alexander II stood until 1918 and its further fate was unknown, although it was traced in the Dzerzhinsky pedestal on the station square in the form of traces of knocked down decorations and inscriptions on polished granite …
The sculpture "lady and girl" was more fortunate: for some time it stood in front of the children's clinic, until the Soviet authorities saw a "sad hint" in this and the sculpture disappeared again until the nineties. Now one-fifth of the architectural monument of a century ago has become an independent part of the history of Saratov and the personification of education in Russia.
