The Looming Head of Jānis Zvīdra in Rēzekne, Latvia

According to Atlas Obscura, in the Latvian town of Rēzekne, near the train station, stands a massive gray granite head that's survived where most Soviet monuments didn't. It's a bust of Jānis Zvīdra, a communist activist killed by Latvian forces in nineteen twenty at age twenty-five. Decades later, in nineteen seventy-one, Soviet authorities commissioned the enormous sculpture—turning him into a 'socialist-realist' icon with an intensely stressed expression. While the Baltic states have largely dismantled Soviet military monuments, this one endures, mostly because Zvīdra was an ethnic local rather than a foreign general. It's a peculiar relic of twentieth-century political history, quietly holding court on a grassy corner next to a park bench.

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