1997, 45 min., colour, BETACAM SP, Stereo
Studio Nadezda

scenario: A. Sokurov, A. Tuchinskaya
camera: A. Fedorov
sound: S. Moshkov
editor: L. Semenova
producer: S. Voloshina

“This monument to the writer will stand here, on this street, where the street joins the square. Through his books the whole world has come to know this unusual city, where nature is squeezed into the exquisite proscenium of the streets and squares, and the human being is driven back into his godforsaken and hostile routine by the superlative buildings.”

The document cycle “The Diary of St. Petersburg” was planned by Sokurov as a series of memorials to the cultural life of the city, created through the mediums of film and video. The first film, “Inauguration of the Dostoevsky Monument,” is a report on the actual event, which occurs in a place near Vladimirski Square, where there is a church and a street. It was in a corner house here that the great author both lived and died. Now, near his last lodgings, there is a market and so the monument stands “between the market and the temple” as the writer Andrei Bitov says at the ceremonial gathering — the main and only event in the film. This is also true of modern Russian life, according to Bitov. Writers, poets, musicians, scientists, actors, priests, museum–workers, the film crew and the film–maker — they are all present in this collective portrait, among the mass of people who have come to celebrate the writer's memory. This thinker, whose social outlook was deemed incompatible with the official ideology of Soviet Russia not so very long ago, is now a symbol of civic consciousness and the inauguration of the monument to him is seen as an historical event, in which all take part.

Alexandra Tuchinskaya

English translation by Tatiana Ussova with assistance from Benjamin Halligan