VLADIVOSTOK: A HISTORIC WALKING TOUR 

SERGEI LAZO MONUMENT

     In front of the Gorky Theater on Svetlanskaya Street stands the Sergei Lazo Monument.  Lazo was a Civil War hero who for the whole Soviet period was thought to have been burnt to death in the engine of a coal-fired train by Japanese interventionists.  This idea has recently been disputed.  According to new information, Lazo was probably shot immediately after his arrest by the Japanese.  In 1975, a statue of Lazo, designed by sculptor L. Pisarevsky, was placed on this pedestal where that of noted Russian Admiral Zavoiko used to stand; new heroes came to replace time-honored ones in order to promote Soviet ideology.

     The Admiral Zavoiko Monument was designed by famous sculptor I. Ginzburg (known for his realistically executed statuettes) and dedicated in 1908.  The statue was three meters high (10 feet) and portrayed the renowned admiral with a map in his right hand and a saber in his left.  Admiral Zavoiko is rightly considered the initiator of the idea to develop a large port in what is today southern Primorye.  When (in 1859) the Governor General of the Amur Region addressed Admiral Zavoiko with the suggestion to develop such a port at Nikolayevsk (further north along the coast), he instead recommended seeking out a suitable place in the south, where Vladivostok is now.  Replacement of Zavoiko’s statue with that of Lazo is presently regarded as a great loss, and the opinion has been expressed to restore the original monument (but to no avail so far).

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