It was way back in 1895.
Emperor Nicholas II is organizing events throughout the Russian Empire to commemorate his father, Alexander III. Museums are being established, and donations are being collected across the empire to erect monuments to the late Emperor.
However, a monument to Alexander III was never erected in our city. Why did this happen? We can find the answer to this intriguing question, in particular, in an 1895 issue of the magazine *Stroitel*:
The Kharkiv City Council’s petition requesting permission to launch a fundraising campaign for the erection of a monument to Emperor Alexander III in Kharkiv was rejected by the Minister of the Interior, given that this private fundraising campaign would hardly have raised sufficient funds to erect a monument in Kharkiv worthy of the Tsar-Peacemaker, and at the same time, it would have diverted donors from the general fundraising campaign for the monument in Moscow.
And so, the people of Kharkiv were denied the unveiling of the monument.
The enormous monument to Emperor Alexander III mentioned above was unveiled in Moscow on May 30, 1912. However, ironically, in that same May 1912, a monument to the emperor was unveiled in one of the villages of the Kharkiv Governorate. But that’s a whole other story…
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