Ostap Bender
In 1994 in Saint Petersburg was held one of the city's 1990s' yearly festivals of satire and humor , bearing the name of a most popular main character of the 20 century Russian language Soviet humourous / satirical prose Ostap Bender, an ingenious conman mastermind from two filmed novels by Ilya Il'f and Evgeniy Petrov "The 12 Chairs" and "The Little Golden Calf". The festival attracted leading Russian humourous authors and comedians and marked its presence in the city by public events including installation of pieces of public art. These over the years included the statue of Ostap Bender next to Arts Square, the memorial plaque to The Nose from Nicholai Gogol's eponymous story and the little siskin statue on the Fontanka, the latter suggested by a Saint Petersburg-born writer known since 1960s Andrei Bitov. These moves were supported by the municipal authorities of St. Petersburg, and a bronze statue of "Chizhik-Pyzhik" was installed just opposite the former School of Jurisprudence. The statue perches on a ledge in the embankment, in the proximity of the First Engineer Bridge.