Pushkinskaya Square

Pushkinskaya Square was historically known as Strastnaya Square, and renamed for Alexander Pushkin in 1937. At the center of the square is a famous statue of Pushkin, funded by public subscription and unveiled by Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1880. In 1950, Joseph Stalin had the statue moved to the other side of the Tverskaya Street, where the Monastery of Christ’s Passions had formerly stood. In 5 December 1965, Glasnost Meeting, the first spontaneous public political demonstration in the Soviet Union after the Second World War, happened here.