The early 17th century was the Time of Troubles, a period of famine, civil war, and foreign invasion that nearly destroyed the Russian state. Polish-Lithuanian forces had occupied Moscow. The Tsardom of Russia was fragmenting. In Nizhny Novgorod, a zemstvo elder named Kuzma Minin -- by trade a butcher and merchant, not a soldier or nobleman -- began calling on the people to take up arms against the occupiers. He was supported by the city council, the local governors, and the clergy. At the ringing of a bell, citizens gathered in the Kremlin's Transfiguration Cathedral. After the service, Minin delivered his appeal: donate your wealth, raise a people's militia, fight for the liberation of the Russian Tsardom. Funds poured in. What the militia needed next was a military commander. The people of Nizhny Novgorod chose Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, a veteran warrior, to lead the force.

The militia marched on Moscow and, on October 22, 1612 (November 4 by the modern calendar), drove the Polish garrison from the capital. It was a turning point that preserved Russian sovereignty and eventually led to the founding of the Romanov dynasty. The original monument to Minin and Pozharsky, sculpted by Ivan Martos and unveiled in 1818, was initially intended for Nizhny Novgorod. But the work was judged to be of such national significance that it was placed on Red Square instead. Nizhny Novgorod received a consolation prize -- an obelisk erected in the Kremlin in 1828. Plans for a proper monument resurfaced in the 1910s but collapsed amid revolutionary upheaval. The Bolsheviks melted down the prepared materials and used them to cast a monument to the Victims of the Revolution of 1905, installed on Freedom Square.

Nearly four centuries after Minin's appeal, the city finally got its statue. In 2004, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov commissioned the renowned Georgian-Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli to create a copy of the Red Square monument for Nizhny Novgorod. On November 4, 2005 -- the newly established Day of National Unity, chosen to mark the anniversary of Moscow's liberation -- the monument was unveiled on National Unity Square. The location was deliberate: this was the ground from which the people's militia of 1611 had set out. The square sits beneath the Kremlin walls, near the same Church of St. John the Baptist where Minin once rallied his neighbors. The date itself carried layered significance. In 1649, Tsar Alexis had ordered the celebration of the Our Lady of Kazan on this day, linking religious devotion to the memory of liberation. The modern holiday folded centuries of meaning into a single afternoon ceremony.

The Nizhny Novgorod monument is five centimeters smaller than the Red Square original, and the inscriptions on the pedestals differ. These are the only material distinctions. In every other way, the two figures of Minin and Pozharsky are identical: the butcher gesturing urgently outward, calling the prince to action, while the seated Pozharsky grips a shield and prepares to rise. The original on Red Square is a national treasure, photographed by millions. The copy in Nizhny Novgorod occupies something rarer -- the exact place where the events it depicts began. History often migrates to capital cities, taking its monuments with it. Here, it migrated back.