Statue of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Saratov, Bronze monument in Chernyshevsky Square, Saratov, Russia.

The Statue of Nikolai Chernyshevsky is a dark bronze standing figure with arms folded across his chest, wearing a long coat, mounted on a tall reddish-brown stone pedestal. The pedestal has a stepped rectangular form with a wider base, a narrower shaft bearing a Cyrillic inscription, and a molded cap beneath the figure. It rests on a broad platform of three stepped tiers in the same stone, in an open paved area with trees behind.

Nikolai Chernyshevsky was born in Saratov in 1828 and went on to become one of the most widely read Russian writers and thinkers of the 19th century. The statue was put up in 1953, long after his death, as part of Soviet efforts to honor figures seen as forerunners of revolutionary ideas.

The monument stands where a statue of Alexander II once stood on Novosobornaya Square, replaced by the Soviet authorities. The first Chernyshevsky memorial, a bust painted black, was made in 1918 by sculptor Pavel Dunduk and is mentioned in Nabokov's novel The Gift. A competition for a new monument was announced in 1935, but the bronze by Alexander Kibalnikov was only installed in 1953.

The monument stands on Chernyshevsky Square at the intersection of Radishcheva and Volzhskaya streets, beside Lipki Park. The paved area around the pedestal is level and open, so you can walk around the statue and read the Cyrillic inscription on the shaft. The square is a public thoroughfare with no gate or fence.

Chernyshevsky wrote his best-known novel "What Is to Be Done?" while held in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, not in Saratov. Yet the city where he grew up is the place where his memory has remained most alive, with the local museum dedicated to him housed in the family home where he was born.