Your report from Prague (1 October) referred to the monumental statue of Stalin that once overlooked the city and was taken down some years after Khrushchev’s celebrated 1956 speech, and to the sculptor’s suicide.
In 1960 I was taken to see the statue by a local inhabitant. The massive sculpture was in the form of a plinth, with Stalin at the head of a frieze depicting joyous workers, peasants and soldiers. I was led to approach it from a certain angle from which the conjunction of a soldier, his submachine gun barrel and a woman’s outstretched hand injected a note of complete bathos. People came there to snigger, I was told. I was also informed – rightly or wrongly – that this effect, unforeseen on a preparatory maquette of the statue, was the reason for the sculptor’s suicide.
Peter Roland
Bognor Regis, West Sussex
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
