Working in an academic and realistic style, Manizer produced a great number of monuments situated throughout the Soviet Union, including some twelve portrayals of Lenin. Manizer was awarded the People's Artist of the USSR (1958), Member of USSR Academy of Arts (1947), vice president of USSR Academy of Arts (1947-1966), chairman of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists from 1937 to 1941, and winner of the Stalin Prize three times.

Manizer's wife Elena Alexandrovna Yanson-Manizer (1890-1971) was a sculptor in her own right, with work at the Dynamo station of the Moscow Metro. Their son Hugh Matveyevich Manizer (born 1927) is a noted painter. Among Manizer's students was the Stalin Prize-winning Fuad Abdurakhmanov.

Manizer is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery of Moscow.

[edit]Work

• an elaborate multi-figure monument to Ukrainian poet and humanist Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• monument to the victims of the 1905 Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, Frunze District, St. Petersburg, 1932
• multifigure equestrian monument to Red Army commander Vasily Chapayev, Samara. 1932
• 80 bronzes of Soviet citizens for the Revolution Square station of the Moscow Metro, 1938
• monument to Soviet figure Valerian Kuybyshev, Samara, 1938
• monument to Lenin in Ulyanovsk, 1941, awarded Stalin Prize second class
• bronze sculptures of the Hero of the Soviet Union Matvey Kuzmin and the Soviet military martyr Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, in the Partisanskaya station of the Moscow Metro, 1943, awarded Stalin Prize first class
• monument to the Metro builders, Electricity Factory station of the Moscow Metro, 1944
• monument to Ivan Pavlov in Ryazan, 1950, awarded Stalin Prize second class

[edit]Reference

• online biography from Saint Petersburg Encyclopedia
• online biography (Russian language)

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•  
• Yuri Petrovich Vlasov (Russian: Юрий Петрович Власов; born December 5, 1935) is a former Olympic heavyweight weightlifter for the Soviet Union, a writer and a politician.

Biography

Yury Vlasov was born in Makiivka, Ukrainian SSR to the family of a military journalist and Komintern agent in China Pyotr Vlasov. Later his father worked as the General Consul in Shanghai, then the Ambassador to Burma.

Yury studied at the Saratov Suvorov military school (1946–1953), then at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy in Moscow, from which he graduated with a Gold Medal in 1959. In Academy he became interested in weightlifting, joined Armed Forces sports society and soon became Master of Sport of the USSR (1957). Between 1959 and 1963 he won all the competitions he participated in, with a huge success at the Rome 1960 Summer Olympics where he beat the world records three times, becoming the first man to clean and jerk more than 200 kg (202.5). He was proclaimed the best sportsmen of the 1960 Olympics and the "Strongest Man on the Planet". He was considered a nerdish intellectual in rim glasses, going against the stereotypes attached to weightlifting.

At the 1964 Summer Olympics he finished second, after another Soviet weightlifter, Leonid Zhabotinsky, and retired from the Olympic Team.

Weightlifting achievements

• Olympic champion (1960);
• Silver medalist in Olympic Games (1964);
• Four-time senior world champion (1959, 1961–1963);
• Silver medalist in Senior World Championships (1964);
• Six-time consecutive senior European champion (1959–1964);
• Set thirty four world records during career.

Medals

Olympic medal record
Men's weightlifting
Competitor for  Soviet Union
Olympic Games
Gold	1960 Rome	+90 kg
Silver	1964 Tokyo	+90 kg
World Weightlifting Championships
Gold	1959 Warsaw	+90 kg
Gold	1961 Vienna	+90 kg
Gold	1962 Budapest	+90 kg
Gold	1963 Stockholm	+90 kg
Silver	1964 Tokyo	+90 kg
European Weightlifting Championships
Gold	1959 Warsaw	+90 kg
Gold	1960 Milan	+90 kg
Gold	1961 Vienna	+90 kg
Gold	1962 Budapest	+90 kg
Gold	1963 Stockholm	+90 kg
Gold	1964 Moskva	+90 kg
USSR Weightlifting Championships
Bronze	1958 Stalino	+90 kg
Gold	1959 Moscow	+90 kg
Gold	1960 Leningrad	+90 kg
Gold	1961 Dnepropetrovsk	+110 kg
Gold	1962 Tbilisi	+110 kg
Gold	1963 Moscow	+102.5 kg
Summer Spartakiad of the USSR
Gold	1959 Moscow	+90 kg
Gold	1963 Moscow	+102.5 kg

Career after retiring from weightlifting

After retiring from weightlifting he became a writer and a politician. Due to his damaged spine, for a few years he could not walk and moved in a wheelchair.

He is the author of several books Overcoming yourself, Salty Joys, The Special Region of China (about his father), Flaming Cross, Rus' without a leader, etc.

Between 1968 and 1976, he published his works in the Soviet Union. But after his work (Flaming Cross) was published in the West, he was considered a mild dissident and was not published in the Soviet Union.

In 1987, after Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, Vlasov became chairman of the Federation of Athletic Gymnastics of the USSR.

He was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies for the Lyublyansky district of Moscow in 1989 and broke from the Communist Party. In parliament he started as a member of the liberal Inter-regional Deputies Group, along with Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Sobchak and Boris Yeltsin, but later became close to nationalists and Christian Democrats.

In 1993, he was elected to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. He was a candidate in the 1996 Russian presidential election but only received 0.20% of the vote (the second-to-last result amongst the ten participants). Following this he apparently retired from politics.

In 2004, at age 69, he took part in veteran's competitions and was able to lift 185 kg.

References

External links

• Yury Vlasov - Hall of Fame at Weightlifting Exchange
• Biography (Russian)
• Yury Vlasov The Fairness of the Strength - the book of memoirs (Russian)
• Vlasov's biography and photos (Russian)
• Is this possible?– article on post-Soviet antisemitism, including quotes by Vlasov (Russian)

There is a life size plaster version by Manizer of this bronze which is now kept in the Manizer museum in Moscow.  

Yuri Vlassov, plaster, life size, 1961, Manizer Museum. 

Bronzes of leading Soviet athletes such as this fine example of 'World Champion Yuri Vlassov' are an important part of Soviet art history.  Vlasov was a remarkable man, firstly as an athlete and later as a writer and politician.  This bronze, in perfect condition with its original patina, is an important example of a Soviet bronze by one of Russia's most famous 20th century sculptors.