Tribute for a Non-Person

When he died in 1971, Nikita Khrushchev was officially a nonperson. Despite his eleven years as Soviet party chief, he was denied the usual honors of burial at the Kremlin Wall and was instead allotted a plot in the far corner of the Novodyevichy Cemetery, Moscow's second-ranking burial ground. The newspapers that had once headlined his speeches identified him in his death notice only as a "pensioner of the state."

The Khrushchev family was obviously resentful of this treatment and decided on their own to erect a monument in Novodyevichy. At a cost of about $20,000, the family hired Ernst Neizvestny, the Soviet Union's most talented sculptor.

The choice was curiously appropriate. Touring a show of experimental art in 1962, Khrushchev was startled by what he saw. He likened it to "painting done by an ass with its tail." Neizvestny was the most prominent artist represented, and he argued forcefully against Khrushchev for an hour. Though the party chief did not change his views on art, he was impressed by Neizvestny's courageous defense and, as he left, told the artist: "You are the kind of man I like." Later, after his forced retirement, Khrushchev expressed regret for having argued with Neizvestny at all. "If I met him now, I would apologize," he said.

Neizvestny's monument, which will be formally unveiled this week on the third anniversary of Khrushchev's death, is symbolically strong, a massive (9 ft. high, 5 ft. wide) abstract of white marble and black granite with a bronze bust of Khrushchev in the center. The white and black blocks, says Neizvestny, represent the bright and dark periods of Khrushchev's career, as well as the bright and dark periods of Soviet life.

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