In Kyiv, they commented on the widespread “pushkin fall”: the monuments will return

The Ukrainian capital is finally being cleared of monuments to Pushkin. Last week, there was a wave of reports in the Russian media that a bust of the poet was dismantled on the territory of gymnasium No. 153 (although this happened in the fall of 2022). And a day later, a real incident occurred – activists attacked the last Kiev monument. “Decolonization cannot be stopped,” the ultrapatriots wrote (in Ukrainian, of course) on the base of the monument in bloody red and white paint, and also wrapped the stone head in a rag, apparently in the tradition of medieval executioners. The situation is terrible and hopeless, but a resident of Kyiv, with whom the MK correspondent spoke, advised us to treat it calmly. The demolished monuments, in his opinion, will be able to calmly survive troubled times and at some point take their original places.

Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote about the fate of the sculpture of Alexander Sergeevich, standing across the road from the building of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, in May 2023. Then it seemed that the demolition would happen in the next week or two, but Pushkin held out for 5 months. It so happened that both the bust and the full-scale monument at the Polytechnic were created by the same person – the famous sculptor Alexander Kovalev. His works include a monument to Lysenko near the National Opera and a bust of Shevchenko on the balcony of this most famous Kyiv theater.

Kovalev also immortalized Maxim Rylsky in the Zhytomyr region, so no one can completely erase him from Ukrainian culture. Erasing it from Russian again will not work – in any case, the Simferopol Pushkin he created will survive.

“The problem with the demolition of monuments remains the recognition of them as cultural monuments. Now the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine is successfully depriving them of their protective status. At the same time, the prospect of storing sculptures removed from their pedestals looks problematic. Since the time of Poroshenko, the idea of ​​​​creating a park of Soviet monumental propaganda has been circulating. But I suspect that the appetites of local developers who have their eyes on the territory of the Exhibition Center in Kyiv, where they wanted to organize this exhibition, will be more significant,” says our interlocutor.

– Were there any options to save the monuments, for example, to buy them from the Ukrainian government?

– I can say one thing about saving. As I understand it, the busts of Pushkin that were dismantled in Kyiv are covered and are waiting to be returned to their places. After all, the same was the fate of the Lenin monument on Bessarabia Square before the Great Patriotic War. The monument by Sergei Merkulov was covered and restored after the liberation of Kyiv, and then, however, it was smashed with a sledgehammer during Euromaidan, but that’s another story.

– “Who needs this and why” – these words of Vertinsky are applicable to the situation of the “fall of guns”. Who benefits from all this?

– Unbridled initiative for demolition is shown by… O. Minister of Culture and Information Policy Rostislav Karandeev. He strives to curry favor with Bankova (the name of this street in Ukraine is an analogue of the word “Kremlin” in the meaning of “country leadership”) and become a full-fledged minister. For him, the war against monuments is an effective way to enlist the support of nationalists in the fight for the ministerial position.

– That is, until Karandeev gets the desired position, the monuments will fall?

– I’m afraid that after this too.

And at this time…

How “decolonization” proceeds, following “decommunization,” can be seen in the example of a small city in the Donbass, which remains under the de facto control of Kyiv. Druzhkovka is 50 thousand mostly Russian-speaking citizens of the country living on an area of ​​46 sq. km. Streets with deliberately Soviet names, such as Lenin, Marx, Engels or Oktyabrskaya/Pionerskaya streets, had their signs changed a few years ago. But there remained names thematically related to Russia.

In September, documents appeared about the results of a new wave of rebranding.

Bryanskaya Street was renamed in a generally acceptable way – to st. Arkhip Kuindzhi (native of Mariupol), Saratovskaya – in st. Chasovyarskaya (from the name of the neighboring town of Chasov Yar). St. Tereshkova – in st. Sarmatian (Sarmatians and Scythians lived in the Donetsk steppes in the past). That is, in some cases, an emphasis is placed on “indigenization,” as when renaming the street. Sergei Yesenin in st. Nikolai Chernyavsky (a little-known poet who was born in Donbass).

Go ahead.

St. Smolenskaya became a street. Kuzma Scriabin, a famous pop-rock musician who got into a car accident after accusations against Petro Poroshenko that the head of state was profiting from Ukraine’s military actions against the Donbass. You can also say that it is normal.

And then the absurdity begins.

St. Pushkin – now st. Peter Kalnyshevsky, ataman of the Zaporozhye Sich, whom even those who studied the history of Ukraine at school had not heard of. Donskaya Street became the street of the so-called “Heroes of the third assault” brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Voronezhskaya Street received the name of the recently deceased Ukrainian paratrooper, st. Matrosova is the name of the British journalist Gareth Jones, who interviewed Stalin. And here the Donetsk land is not entirely clear.

But that’s not all. The “fighters against imperial ideas” were thwarted by… Evgeny Vakhtangov.

On Google maps* (GOOGLE is recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation) of the suburban village of Alekseevo-Druzhkovka, a street of several houses running along the river is not marked in any way. But if you open Yandex maps, the plan of the village will be more detailed, and we will read: “Vakhtangov Street.”

The great director was not included in the September “wave”; the resolution of the “chief of the military administration” does not mention him, but in public pages on social networks, citizens are asked to find an alternative to Evgeniy Bagrationovich. And believe me, whether the residents want or don’t want to look for a replacement for him, all Russians will be removed from the map, even those whose surname is Armenian.

Read also “Demolitions of monuments in Ukraine: what would Pushkin answer”