A number of sources argue that in the first years of Soviet power, as part of the struggle against religion in the country, a monument to the apostle, which betrayed Christ, appeared. We checked if it was so.

In most stories about the emergence of the Russian monument to Judas, Sviyazhsk - historically the city, and now the village on the Volga Island from Kazan. That's what Writes Localist Historian Georgy Müller: “According to the Lenin plan of monumental propaganda and the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, a commission led by N.K. Krupskaya, a list of a person of the historical past was prepared, which, according to the Bolsheviks," deserve gratitude from the revolution. " <...> Among the Person who honored the attention of the Bolsheviks, along with the figures of the French Revolution of the 18th century Danton and Robespierre, was Sophia Perovskaya and a strange figure, threatening a finger at the sky ... Judas Vykariot. Judas was brought to the list of revolution figures by someone from the Leninist environment. He had to personify, according to the Bolsheviks, the first fighter with religious obscurantism.

Several dozen boxes with figures of “revolutionary rebels” - from Judas of the craft to Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev - a bucket attached to the armored train of Leo Trotsky, a special freight car. Now it is difficult to say why the monument to Jude-Christ-seller was hoisted precisely on the Peninsula of Sviyazhsk. Perhaps he just came to hand to the Red Guards and sailors? ..

The town of Sviyazhsk was the first in the list of settlements of Russia marked by monuments of the revolution. An eyewitness to the installation of the gypsum idol Judas, someone A. Caraksin, wrote in a brochure the "roads of Russian Troubles", published in the 1920s in Berlin, that this monument was erected on the island of the Volga military flotilla immediately after the capture of Kazan.

<...>

On the morning of September 6, the Red Guards left the island, and in the evening of the same day, the inhabitants smashed the idol to Judah to smithereens. The second gypsum Judas, similar to Sviyazhsky, was, according to the memoirs, established by the Revolutionary Military Council in Tomsk. ”

Messages about the monument of Judas in Soviet Russia are often found in fiction (for example, in works 1931, 1939 And 1953 years), and the lion's share is here Emigrant prose. In Soviet journalism, where they could and should have been the most complete information about such structures, they are practically absent.

In July 1919, the newspaper Izvestia of the Petrograd Council of Workers and Red Army Deputies in the article under the heading “Crusade against Workers and Peasants” reprinted excerpts from the Kolchakovsky newspapers “Siberian Stun” and “Velikaya Russia” (there is no copy on the network): “The monument to Judas to the Vykariotsky. Omsk, May 5. According to Soviet newspapers, the Executive Committee of the Tambov Council decided to erect a monument to Judas to Zariota in Tambov. ”

As you can see, here, too, information is based on anti -Soviet publications. There are only two relatively detailed sources of information about the Soviet monument to Judas.

1) the brochure of the emigrant writer A. Varaxin (in the quote of Muller above called Karaxin) “Roads of Russian Troubles”, allegedly published in Berlin in 1923 and today is available only in the form Excerpts.

2) and the main source: the book of memoirs of the Danish diplomat Henning Celer "Red Garden". Chapter about Sviyazhsk, the text of which is available today in Two parts, based, according to the author, on his trip to the city in 1918.

The Prague newspaper "Church Vedomosti", published in December 1923, refers to Keler:

As you can see, here the authors of the article are not sure of the reliability of Keler's words. But there are other circumstances that make us doubt. Namely:

-the absence of any information about the monument to Judas in Sviyazhsk in Soviet documentary sources;

- The author has an action in a city called Sviagorod. He became Sviyazhsky only in translations;

- confusion with the dates and directions of the journey of Keler;

- How Recognized Keler himself in 1943 in response to accusations of fiction and plagiarism, “memories are artistically processed, condensed and reinforced. Each of them has a lot of experience, but they should be perceived as a work of art ”;

- coincidence of the installation time of the monument with the funeral of the prominent Soviet brigade Yana Yudin, who died nearby. After his death, his body was sent to Sviyazhsk station and was buried behind the railway tracks. On the monument built on the grave, it was engraved: "Yan Yudin, the commander of the Left -Bank group of the Red Army on the defense of Kazan, and his orderly, who died in a battle for Kazan 12–VIII --1918." Today there is no monument, but the remains of the commander were transferred to the village of Yudino. Perhaps it was the presence of a tombstone of the tombstone that Judin seemed weakly understanding by the Celler with a phantasmagoric blasphemy;

- V Resolution The Council of People's Commissars of July 30, 1918 contains the very list of people who should erect monuments in the USSR. There are no Judas among them.

As for the brochure of Varaxin, there is no information about it in Database "International Consolidated Catalog of the Russian Book, 1918–1926", where almost all information about the publications of the Russian abroad of those years is collected.

In confirmation of the events described by the Cabel, we have, in fact, only two things. Firstly, counts Proven that the diplomat really came to Sviyazhsk in the spring and summer of 1918, although this does not give any information about the monument itself. Secondly, social networks write About a certain old woman Kurashova, who allegedly saw a monument to Judas in Sviyazhsk in childhood, and wooden. Kurashova died in the area of 2007, so she can no longer take commentary.

Thus, the story about the monument to Judas in Sviyazhsk has much more facts against than facts for. There are no detailed information about monuments in other cities.