"The Great Schemer" Starobil's'k Local Custom Tip by hunterV

In 2008 the monument to the famous novel was unveiled at the campus of Starobilsk Faculty of Shevchenko National University.

University in Starobilsk
The monument was a gift for the tenth anniversary of Starobilsk Faculty of the Shevchenko National University. The jubilee was celebrated on October 24, 2008.
Sculptor Andrey Borovoy, a lecturer of Shevchenko National University, is the author of the monument.
The Twelve Chairs monument depicts Ostap Bender entering the city in 1927 and a beggar boy who spread out his arm begging “the Great Schemer” for notorious ten copecks.
As the faculty dean Nickolay Vykhvatenko said, this monument should become the visiting card of the faculty and one of the visiting cards of Starobilsk.
The name of the city is closely connected with the famous novel of Soviet writers Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov “The Twelve Chairs” whose main hero was Ostap Bender, “the Great Schemer”.
One of the most hilarious chapters in the book is "Interplanetary Chess Congress", still perhaps the greatest piece of chess humor ever written.
As Alexander Fadeyev, Chairman of the Soviet Writers' Union, wrote to Ilf and Petrov: "You have a very nice hero, Ostap Bender. But really, he's just a son of a ***." (Journal "Odessa", No. 8, 1997).
The novel was filmed and has always enjoyed great popularity among people of the Soviet Union and FSU countries now.
The actors who played the main role of Ostap Bender – Archil Gomiashvili (1926-2005) who played Ostap in 1971 and later Andrey Mironov (1941-1987) who played that role in 1977 – became almost national heroes afterwards, even if that role had been their only one.

Website: http://starobelsk.org/