In this artwork, how is the 20th century—1961–1998 of the History elucidated?
The idea of commemorating the victims of Soviet repression was first publicly proposed in October 1961 at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. When Nikita Khrushchev's program of De-Stalinisation ended in 1964, however, such a concept was abandoned and in the post-Khrushchev era political dissidents were once again repressed. The idea persisted among Soviet dissidents during the 1970s. In the 1980s, during perestroika, the policy of democratization and a relaxation of censorship finally allowed open discussions of the previously forbidden topic of State Terror. At the end of the 1980s, the Memorial society was established. One of its major tasks was to commemorate the victims of political repression. At first it made a start only in Moscow, but after the St. Petersburg branch was founded in 1988 it became an active participant of the society's work.In June 1989 the Leningrad branch of the Memorial society called on citizens to create a monument in honour of the victims of political repression. As envisioned by the initiators, the monument should also be accompanied by a museum and an archive. Several locations were considered for the future monument: the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery; the Bolshoy Dom, NKVD (and KGB) headquarters in Leningrad; the Kresty Prison; and Troitskaya Square (then called Revolution Square) opposite the Former Political Convicts Residential Home. Memorial invited all citizens to join the discussion of the idea and initiated the fundraising campaign.On 27 March 1990, the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Congress of People's Deputies announced "an open competition on the best concept, location and design offer of a monument in honour of the victims of Stalin's terror". Troitskaya Square had been chosen as the preferred location. 
Activists protested and demanded commemoration of all victims of Soviet repression. As a result, on 17 June 1992, the Leningrad City Congress cancelled the competition before it had begun.Memorial seized the initiative. Instead of the desired monument (which would require serious investments of time and money) a small, temporary sign would be created as a placeholder, the society announced. On 4 September 1990, the last day of an "International Conference on Human Rights" in the city and on the eve of the memorial day for "Victims of the Red Terror" (5 September), a square granite base was installed on Trinity Square. "On this site a monument to the victims of political repression will one day stand," the inscription on its surface read. The base was crowned with a bronze wreath of barbed wire, and words from Akhmatova's Requiem ("I Would like to recall them all by name") were engraved on the south edge of the base. it was designed by the artist Dmitry Bogomolov.			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
On 1 October 1990, the Leningrad authorities started a new round of the project competition in motion. 
This time it considered the demand to widen the monument's message to "condemn all violence and illegality, neglection of political and any other intolerance" without reference to specific historical events. The panel of judges was headed by two persons directly affected by the Red Terror: artist Andrei Mylnikov, whose father was executed in 1918, and art expert Dmitry Likhachov, a survivor of the Solovki camp. In spring 1991, the entries were displayed in the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg. On 3 June 1991, the jury discussed them and selected the proposal of Dmitry Bogomolov which depicted a bronze human figure, crushed and crucified between four rocks. The lettering on the rocks was a record of political campaigns of repression in Petrograd-Leningrad. Soon the city administration lost interest, however, and the competition was cancelled.In 1995–1996 with the help from the Mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, other memorials to the "victims of political repression" were unveiled in the city: Mihail Chemiakin's "Metaphysical Sphinxes" on the bank of the Neva opposite the Kresty Prison, and the "Moloch of Totalitarianism" by the entrance to the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery. Both were widely criticized by activists and former political prisoners: the message of the monuments was unclear, they said, so was the depiction of evil and violence. In 1996, the municipal authorities announced that they would build a memorial monument based on the ideas of Edward Zaretsky, a Leningrad-based sculptor and a member of local Jewish community. Zaretsky founded the Tsayar artistic association and went on to create such monuments as that to "Jews who fell victim to political repression" (1997) at the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery. In 1998, Memorial's co-founder Veniamin Joffe publicly criticized the city administration for ignoring the future monument's location during the reburial ceremony of the remains of the last Romanovs, even though the procession passed through Troitskaya Square.For over ten years the city authorities back-pedalled over the proposal. Memorial's wish for a grander monument vanished after the 1998 Russian financial crisis: many similar initiatives across the country then met the same fate. In the late 1990s, the bronze wreath was stolen from the pedestal by vandals.
State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg perestroika Russian Moscow Mayor of Saint Petersburg democratization Kresty Prison Memorial 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union political repression Saint Petersburg Neva Romanovs De-Stalinisation 1998 Russian financial crisis Dmitry Likhachov Nikita Khrushchev Levashovo Memorial Cemetery Bolshoy Dom Andrei Mylnikov KGB Soviet Union Mihail Chemiakin NKVD Soviet dissidents Anatoly Sobchak Khrushchev era