SOVIET-ERA STATUES, LETTER FROM GREAT WAR, RESURFACE IN FRANCE

Agence France Presse — English
February 6, 2008 Wednesday 5:03 PM GMT
Paris

French archaeologists said Wednesday they had discovered a cache of
shattered Soviet-era statues in a chateau north of Paris, as well as
a letter sent to an American World War I soldier in 1918.

Broken heads and limbs from the giant statues — which measured 2.5
to 3 metres — were discovered piled inside several 17th-century
ice chests in the chateau in Baillet-en-France in 2004, the INRAP
archaeology institute said.

They also found a series of sculpted stone disks, originally from
far-flung parts of the Soviet empire including Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Researchers identified the works as part of the Soviet pavillion
at the 1937 arts and techniques exhibition in Paris, a vast display
depicting allegories of the 11 Soviet republics — pitched opposite
the pavillion from Nazi Germany.

They were later given as gifts to France’s biggest union, the General
Labour Confederation (CGT), which put them on display in the grounds
of the chateau.

But at the start of World War II, the property was confiscated by
the pro-Nazi French government and the statues were set aside and
forgotten.

Also in 2004, in the eastern town of Messein, archaeologists unearthed
a glass beer bottle with a porcelain cap — containing a rolled-up
four-page letter that was posted to a US soldier at the end of the
Great War.

Posted from Oklahoma City on July 15, 1918, it was written to sergeant
Morres Vickers Liepman by an aunt, and describes wartime hardships,
labour shortages and the mass conscription of black Americans.

Liepman returned to the United States in August 1919 and was
demobilised in September of that year. His letter has been added to
the French National Archives.