From Pushkin to Suvorov: how many monuments have already been demolished in Ukraine

The bill goes to hundreds

On Thursday, a monument to Russian commander Alexander Suvorov was dismantled in Izmail, Ukraine. In fact, not a week goes by without something being demolished somewhere in Nezalezhnaya. According to various sources, since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, more than eighty monuments, busts and monuments related to Russian and Soviet history have been destroyed. And since 2014, there have been hundreds. These are poets and writers, generals and politicians. “MK” recalled the most famous cases of demolition and vandalism.

One of the most notorious and scandalous examples is the sculptural composition “To the Founders of Odessa” in this city, consisting of a monument to Catherine II, as well as associates standing at her feet – Grigory Potemkin, Joseph de Ribas, Platon Zubov, the first architect of the city, Franz de Vollan. As soon as the long-suffering monument was desecrated, it was poured over with paint and covered with inscriptions. And in October, the head of the public organization “Green Leaf” Vladislav Balinsky climbed a huge staircase to the head of the empress, putting a red rag on it, and hung a noose on her hand.

The monument to the Empress and her associates was repeatedly proposed to be demolished, but it never came to the point. And so the authorities of Odessa decided to put an end to this story by approving their dismantling. Officials either assured that the monuments would be transferred to the museum, or they were going to store them in a special warehouse belonging to the municipal cemetery, and even talked about a new place where the sculptural composition could be installed. Here are just museums where monuments to Russian heroes could stand in Ukraine, specific: there was, for example, an idea to create a Museum of Totalitarianism, where the demolished sculptures would be kept.

Recently, the monument to Suvorov in Poltava was demolished, as was the bust in honor of Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Kharkov. The statue of Suvorov in Poltava stood in the Poltava Museum of Heavy Bomber Aviation, and even earlier – in the courtyard of the Ivan Bohun Military Lyceum in Kyiv. The initiator of the demolition was the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Anton Drobovich. He considered that the monument is “an element of Soviet propaganda.”

Both Balinsky and Drobovich are condemned by many Ukrainians on social networks, just as they condemn the mockery of history. Visiting radicals from Western Ukraine advocate the destruction of historical values, and the local population cannot resist the armed men, who are supported by the SBU. “They sorted out the monuments, but when will they give the residents light and heat?” Odessa residents are outraged in social networks.

Many monuments that are being demolished in Ukraine are included in the list of cultural heritage. In November, a monument to Soviet soldiers “Ukraine – Liberators” was demolished in Uzhgorod. The monument in the form of a bronze figure of a soldier with a machine gun and a banner was erected in 1970, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. A winch was tied to it, and then they threw it to the ground, destroying the sculpture.

According to local officials, the monument is supposedly emergency, and a monument to Transcarpathian attack aircraft will be erected in its place. And at the very beginning of the special military operation near Kyiv, the monument erected in 1961 to the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia was destroyed. Local authorities argued that there could be no more friendship between the two countries.

Now the Kyiv regime is not only mercilessly erasing everything related to Russian history, but is also trying to remove Ukrainians from Slavic culture as much as possible. If among the politicians back in 2014 Vladimir Lenin suffered greatly – a huge number of his monuments were demolished in the country – then after the start of the NMD, Pushkin took the brunt.

In 2022, a real “de-Pushkinization” was staged in Ukraine, massively demolishing all known monuments to the poet, especially in the western part of the country. The first known case of demolition occurred in April in Mukachevo, followed by Uzhgorod, Ternopil, Lviv region, Vinnitsa and many other cities. The bust of Pushkin in Kharkov was first covered with bags, supposedly protecting it from splinters, and then they nevertheless dumped it and took it away in an unknown direction. Busts of the poet are also actively spoiled by vandals, doused with paint, and curses are written on them. And in the Transcarpathian region, in the village of Pushkino, having destroyed the monument, they thought about renaming the settlement.

In addition to Pushkin, Maxim Gorky also suffered. The monument to him, located on the territory of the school, was demolished in the summer in the Kirovograd region. Now in Ukraine they want to demolish the monument to the Soviet writer Nikolai Ostrovsky – in the Khmelnytsky region.

But not always strong, for centuries, Soviet monuments can be broken. And when it is too difficult to do this, Ukraine acts differently – it simply changes and distorts the essence of the monument. This happened with the Arch of Friendship, built in 1982 and symbolizing the friendship between Kyiv and Moscow. The Kyiv regime was unable to destroy the huge monumental arch, so they simply repainted it in rainbow colors in 2017 and called it the “Arch of Diversity”…