By Olha Hembik | 2024-12-20

WARSAW -- Following a city council decision earlier this year, Kyiv continues to dismantle busts and other symbols of the Soviet past as part of its decolonization process.

Workers took down busts of Soviet military leaders Sydir Kovpak, Ivan Chernyakhovsky, Pavel Rybalko and Oleksiy Fedorov in Kyiv on December 4, according to the National Ukrainian Youth Association (NUMO) board.

"This happened following the Kyiv City Council's decision of July 4, 2024, on removing these and other objects from public spaces as part of decolonization," Oleg Slabospitsky, a board member of NUMO, wrote on Facebook.

The council voted then to dismantle 254 items, he wrote.

As of now, "nearly half of these items have been already removed," he said.

Decolonization began in Ukraine right after the Soviet Union collapsed. Since then, the country has been removing monuments and place names that reflect the communist ideology.

Key to this process has been the demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin, which began during the Euromaidan protests of 2013.

But Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 galvanized the process.

In 2022, Ukrainian authorities razed dozens of monuments and erased at least 7,500 place names associated with Russia, the Soviet Union or the Russian empire, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory found.

On April 26, 2022, workers dismantled the Soviet monument under the People's Friendship Arch in Kyiv.

In addition, on August 1, 2023, workers removed the Soviet coat of arms from the Mother Ukraine monument in Kyiv.

Decolonization

The process is taking place nationwide.

"As of now, 95% of the streets in Ukraine's large cities have been renamed. Half of the [monuments] have been dismantled," Vadym Pozdniakov, cofounder of the organization Decolonization.Ukraine, told Kontur.

"Those numbers are for all of Ukraine, meaning that in some places 100% of monuments have been taken down, while in others 20%-50% have," he explained.

Large cities and provincial capitals are more actively involved in decolonization, he said, noting that small towns and villages are short of activists who would speed up the process.

"Of the Russian imperial memorials -- to Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy and others -- probably 70% of them have already been demolished," Pozdniakov said, referring to three 19th-century Russian authors. "The number is even higher for Soviet and imperial symbols."

"But if you take into account every village where something like that remains, it's an accomplishment if 25% have been dismantled," he added.

Officials are dismantling monuments in accordance with laws on protecting cultural heritage.

If a monument is legally classified as a cultural heritage site, the question of removing this status is addressed first, according to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.

"The problem is that the Culture Ministry works very slowly and there are a number of [cultural heritage sites] it hasn't removed from the registry. That makes it impossible to dismantle them," Pozdniakov said.

Poland's experience

Much of Ukraine's decolonization efforts take after Poland's experiences.

Poland's decolonization began after 1918, when Poland regained its nationhood more than a century after being partitioned. At the time, Warsaw decided to do away with the Russian imperial legacy.

"The symbol of Russian supremacy in Poland was indisputably the Alexander Nevsky cathedral on Saxon Square," said Michał Krasucki, director of Warsaw's Heritage Protection Department.

"Construction of the cathedral ... was completed in 1912, and then it was torn down between 1924 and 1926. Pieces of the building were used in different structures in Warsaw and other parts of the country. For instance, the excellent marble was used to decorate the gravestone of ... Józef Piłsudski," he told Kontur, referring to the first ruler of interwar Poland.

"We need to take down everything tied to Russian influence, just as we did with the Russian churches built by the [Russian] empire, for the same reasons," Artur Wojdygo, a Warsaw resident, told Kontur.

Wojdygo has been volunteering since February 2022 to help Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

He is among the Varsovians who advocate demolishing the Palace of Culture and Science and sympathize with Ukraine's battle to decolonize itself.

Soviet and Polish workers erected the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw between 1952 and 1955. The Soviet Union called the eyesore its gift to the Polish people.

It represents a Stalinist architectural style known scornfully as "wedding cakes."

Standing at 237 meters and 42 stories, the building was Poland's tallest until 2022.

"The Palace of Culture and Science ... needs to disappear," Wojdygo said.