MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is currently in Russia on a three-day official visit, will unveil on Wednesday a monument to U.S. poet Walt Whitman.
Clinton will be joined in the unveiling ceremony by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov. The statue stands in front of the Faculty of Philology of the Moscow State University, Russia's largest and most prestigious institute of higher education.
According to the Russia Peace Foundation, the monument was a reciprocal gift from the mayor of Washington, D.C. for a monument to Alexander Pushkin, which was presented to the U.S. capital in September 2000 by the mayor of Moscow in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth.
Whitman (1819-1892) was a poet, journalist and essayist, and is often referred to as America's first "poet of democracy."
Following the unveiling of the monument, Clinton will address students of the Moscow State University and will later set off for a visit to Kazan, the capital of Russia's Muslim republic of Tatarstan.
