Exhibit invites visitors to perch where a statue of the former Soviet leader stood until it was toppled during protests in 2013
For decades, Vladimir Lenin enjoyed a splendid view over Kiev’s Besarabsky market, until the monument to the former Soviet leader was pulled down from its perch in December 2013 by crowds who would eventually go on to depose Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Now, anyone can stand where the Russian revolutionary once stood regally, as an art exhibit allows Ukrainians to climb atop the pedestal.
The installation, by the Mexican artist Cynthia Gutiérrez, has a series of rickety temporary steps to gain access to the top of the pedestal, and is meant to generate reflection on “imposed memory, system failure, emptiness, identity, and occupying space”, according to a description.
Kiev residents can clamber up and take selfies, or simply take a moment to ponder the view of the city from where Lenin once stood.
After a new, pro-western government took power in Kievin 2014, Lenins came down all over the country, first unofficially, and then as part of a new decommunisation law.
The law calls for all monuments and symbols linked to the Soviet regime to be removed from public places, as well as the renaming of place names referencing Soviet leaders or events tied to the 1917 revolution.
Since the toppling of Kiev’s Lenin, 1,018 others have come down acrossUkraine, as well as 148 monuments to other personalities linked to the Soviet regime, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, said in comments reported by Interfax-Ukraine.
Some were pulled down haphazardly by volunteers, while others were removed by order of the government. In some places more creative solutions have been found: Odessa’s Lenin statue was transformed into a monument to Darth Vader.
In a village in western Ukraine, Lenin Street has been renamed Lennon Street after John Lennon.
Many Ukrainians say the decommunisation programme provides a much-needed break with the Soviet past that should have been implemented in 1991, but others say it could create further rifts in a country that is already split on attitudes towards the past.
Particularly controversial is the drive to lionise the second world war anti-Soviet fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which is also part of the decommunisation law.
The movements, which sought to create a Ukrainian state independent from the Soviet Union, followed a fascist-inspired ideology and were at times allied with the Nazis. They were involved in massacres of Jews and Poles.
The leader of the radical wing of the OUN, Stepan Bandera – who was assassinated by the KGB in 1959 – has proved a particularly divisive figure, but nevertheless Kiev city council voted this month to rename Moscow Avenue in the capital as Bandera Avenue. Given that Moscow is not solely linked to the Soviet regime and so does not fall under the decommunisation law, the move seemed provocative.
There is also a campaign to rename Kiev’s Boryspil airport after Ivan Mazepa, a Ukrainian Cossack leader who switched sides from Russia to Sweden in the early 18th century and is regarded by Moscow as a traitor.
As for Lenin’s former perch, no decision has been taken on whether to erect a replacement statue or simply leave the empty pedestal in place. The one-week art installation will be removed at the weekend.
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