St. Petersburg Cossacks Deny Involvement In Mephistopheles Relief Destruction

The Moscow Times ^ | 8/28/15 | Anna Dolqov

[marshmallow]

A Cossack organization denied that one of its members was responsible for the removal of a 100-year-old bas relief depicting the mythical demon Mephistopheles from a historic building in St. Petersburg after a man claiming responsibility for the act said he was a member of the group.

In a letter sent to the editors of St. Petersburg news site Fontanka.ru, a man named Denis Gorchin — the self-described former leader of a group known as the Cossacks of St. Petersburg — said his organization was responsible for the removal of the bas relief from the building on Lakhtinskaya Street, which faces the construction site of a new Orthodox Church.

The relief depicted the mythical demon Mephistopheles, which appeared as the devil in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play "Faust." The building upon which it was mounted was designed by a famous St. Petersburg architect Alexander Lishnevsky in 1910, and is considered a minor landmark that was reportedly protected as a city heritage site.

St. Petersburg Cossacks were quick to distance themselves from Gorchin, who according to Fontanka.ru does not appear to be a real Cossack. St. Petersburg's Orthodox Cossack leader Andrei Polyakov said Gorchin had never been a member of the community or of the group Cossacks of St. Petersburg, the Kommersant newspaper reported Friday.

"I know all the community and the diaspora of the Cossacks. We have no Cossacks with such names and surnames; those are provocateurs," Polyakov was quoted as saying.

The bas relief was taken down on Wednesday, and local residents reported that the men responsible for taking down Mephistopheles repeatedly declined to identify themselves or their employer, prompting speculation among locals that the destruction was linked to the construction of the nearby Orthodox church, Russian news reports said.

[Ciexyz]

Always somebody offended about something.