Monuments to the heroes of 1812 are to be restored in the Kaluga and Smolensk regions, following Polotsk.

September 18, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Polotsk designers are developing unified design and estimate documentation for the restoration of monuments to the heroes of 1812 in Polotsk, Maloyaroslavets (Kaluga region) and the village of Krasnoye (Smolensk region), Stanislav Krassovsky, chief specialist of the Polotsk City Executive Committee for defense and mobilization issues, told a BELTA correspondent. Administrations of Russian settlements have expressed their desire to use the experience of Polotsk residents and restore similar monuments by the 200th anniversary of the victory in the war of 1812. As Stanislav Krassovsky explained, seven chapel-monuments were erected in the places of the most significant battles with the French in the mid-19th century, including in Polotsk, Maloyaroslavets, the village of Krasnoye, Smolensk and at Borodino Field. In the 1930s, almost all chapel-monuments were destroyed. Only the monument in Smolensk has survived to this day. More than 44 million Russian rubles have been allocated from the budget of the Union State for the recreation of the monument to the Heroes of the War of 1812 in Polotsk. The draft design has already been approved by the republican expert council on monumental and decorative and applied arts. Work on the technical documentation is nearing completion, and restoration work will begin in Polotsk in the near future. The Polotsk plant "Tekhnolit" has begun casting the cast-iron parts of the monument: the lower tier and steps are already ready. Bronze parts are being cast at the Minsk Sculpture Combine. As Stanislav Krassovsky noted, when working on the sketch, architects and sculptors relied not only on archival materials and surviving photographs, but also thoroughly studied and measured the monument to the Heroes of 1812 in Smolensk, which has survived in its original form. The chapel-monument was opened in Polotsk in 1850. The author of the project was architect Fixen. The monument was a pyramid crowned with a dome with a gilded cross. Around it stood eight cast-iron columns with domes, on which gilded eagles were perched. All this rested on a cylindrical pedestal. The height of the monument was 23.7 m, and the total weight reached 221 tons. In 1932, the monument to the Heroes of 1812 was destroyed. -0-