The cornerstone of the destroyed monument to the Heroes of 1812 was found in Polotsk

October 12, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. A foundation stone of the destroyed chapel-monument to the Heroes of 1812 has been found in Polotsk, Stanislav Krassovsky, chief specialist of the Polotsk City Executive Committee for defense and mobilization issues, told a BELTA correspondent. The granite slab with a cross and the date of the monument's foundation (1848) was discovered today during preparatory work for the restoration of the monument. According to Stanislav Krassovsky, such slabs were laid at the base of all seven monuments erected in the mid-19th century in cities where the most significant battles of the Patriotic War of 1812 took place. Archival materials indicate that in some cities, commemorative medals of the veterans of the 1812 war were laid in the foundation of the monument along with the foundation stone. It was previously assumed that during the demolition of the monument in the 1930s, not only the foundation but also the consecrated foundation slab itself was destroyed by an explosion. All work at the site of the historical find has now been suspended. Archaeologists have already arrived here and begun their research. As BELTA reported earlier, over 44 million Russian rubles have been allocated from the Union State budget for the reconstruction of the monument to the Heroes of the 1812 War 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 "Technoloit" has begun casting the cast-iron parts of the monument. Bronze parts are being cast at the Minsk Sculpture Combine. When working on the design, architects and sculptors relied not only on archival materials and preserved 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 Fiksen. 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-