Blood, Sweat, and Tears - Russian history

It won't surprise anyone when I say that Russia has had a troubled history. Peace, prosperity, and democracy have been far too short-lived. This shared hardship is part of what unites the disparate nations of the Russian Federation. They are proud that their parents built a superpower out of an archaic tsarist backwater, in spite of all the needless repression and bloodshed. They are also proud of the cultural, athletic, and scientific achievements of their countrymen. This sentiment is visible in the countless plaques, memorials, and statues which dot Russia. The highway between St Petersburg and Moscow has dozens of different WWII monuments. War memorials are considerably more potent to a nation which lost 20 million souls on its own soil within living memory than to an "export only" country like Canada.

The most common statue by far was of Lenin, usually gazing or pointing purposefully and dressed in an overcoat and cloth hat. Each city had at least one. We didn't have any good pictures of them, so here is one someone else took in Moscow:(Most statues are more restrained.) I don't think there is much adoration of Lenin or Leninism left among the general population, but they are still considered an important part of 21st-century Russia. I didn't see any statues of Trotsky, Stalin, Krushchev, or other architects of the Soviet Union; perhaps it is only the exceptional strength of the Lenin personality cult which preserved all his statues rather than any historical sentiment.

The next most frequent statues were writers such as Pushkin or Tolstoi. The remainder were eminent scientists, warriors, or artists. Here is a plaque to Dostoevsky in St Petersburg:

Novgorod, arguably the first capital of modern Russia, has a remarkable monument called the "Millenium of Russia" monument. It was created in 1862 to commemorate 1000 years (!) since the founding of Russia (generally considered to be the creation of Kievan Rus in 862).

The globe and cross are of course Orthodox symbols. The women atop the globe represent Mother Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. The major figures are Rurik, the Viking who founded Kievan Rus; Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who introduced Christianity; tsars Mikhail Romanov, Peter the Great, and Ivan III; and the war hero Dmitri Donskoi, with a heathen Tatar underfoot. Dozens more personages are along the lower band.
Tomsk is a special case. It is an isolated university town, so I suppose they could be more permissive with respect to history. Case in point: several streets in the old town are named after influential 19th-century anarchists such as Bakunin. How often does a government memorialize anarchists?