Iraq on Tuesday unveiled a monument to world-renowned Romantic-era poet Alexander Pushkin in the University of Baghdad.
“The inauguration of the monument is evidence of good and strong relations between Russia and Iraq, a symbol of strengthening cultural ties,” said Professor Riyadh Aziz, assistant president of the University of Baghdad .
“Students will ask us: who is this? Why does a monument to this person stand here? And we will tell about them about Pushkin’s works and say that he is a great son of Russia, to which Iraq's people are linked by years of friendship and cooperation,” said Samir Husein, the head of Baghdad University’s Department of Literature.
Members of the Pushkin section of the Union of Russian Writers and Russian diplomats attended the inauguration ceremony in the University of Baghdad, as wells as the monument’s author - Nikolai Kuznetsov-Muromsky and representatives of Russian oil comapny Gazprom-Neft, which sponsored the sculpture.
In 2009, Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani presented a bust of preeminent Iraqi poet and public activist Muhammad Mahdi al-Zawahiri (1899-1997) to Russia’s Voronezh State University.
