Shchors was lying on the ground, all stony and imperturbable. Cameramen and photographers crowded around him, everyone wanted to snatch their shot. Shchors's gymnast was powdered with snow. And then it was loaded into a truck and taken to the aviation museum, where it will be stored. And an ordinary Ukrainian, the one who had not yet been loaded and sent to dig trenches, remained. So why should he stay in Kyiv?
Shchors is the Red Commander. His life is short and bright. It is assumed that only people for whom it is important that Shchors is a red commander will suffer because of the demolition of the monument. Shchors fought in the Civil War, a veteran of the First World War, from which he came out with the rank of second lieutenant of the Russian army. But let's omit these facts of his biography from today's context. We have every right to demolish monuments to poets and writers in Ukraine who have nothing red in their biography.
After all, they are not fighting against Shchors, but against everything Russian.
However, Shchors is from Ukraine, from the village of Snovsk in the Chernihiv region. But it is better to omit this fact for convenience.
The demolition of Shchors is no longer a joke. Previously, after each demolition of monuments erected in Soviet times, people joked: they say, now decommunization should reach the Soviet metro. But these days, water has reached it - the Kyiv metro is drowning, people are crowding in huge numbers at the stops. The water drips and stays under the ground, on which the cold stone body of Shchors was laid today.
They say that Klitschko deliberately knocked him down today. This was preceded by a long debate. Various cultural commissions decided whether it was necessary to saw off Shchors from the horse, recognized the artistic value only of the horse, but not of its rider. In the commissions, they clung to the horse so that at least it would remain a beacon in the sea of impending chaos. To stand as a landmark in this space of the city, which is rapidly losing its face.
Monuments are the face of the city. Outstanding on the flat are its cultural features. Shchors on his horse, as if alive, soared over Kiev. He gave the city a scale, raised it above the long-suffering earth. The power in the chest muscles of the horse carried Kiev forward. And now that's gone. And there are no usual streets. There are no landmark monuments. And you will no longer say: "Let's meet at Pushkin's", "Let's meet at Shchors's". They're not there anymore.
And if Klitschko really decided to demolish it today in order to divert the attention of the press from the crowds at the bus stops to Shchors, it would be a great excuse for the Kiev regime.
But no, the Kiev regime, pinned down at the front, is just trying, while there is still time, to erase the faces of Ukrainian cities. To forget yourself in them — yourself reading Pushkin's poems in literature classes, and yourself singing at a music lesson: "Lads, whose will you be? / Who's leading you into battle? / Who is under the red banner / The wounded are coming?" / "We are the sons of farm labourers, / We are for a new world, / Shchors is marching under the banner / The Red Commander". Representatives of the Kiev regime hate themselves, the little ones, in all this and want to destroy it all so as not to remember that they are Russians.
Well, what about an ordinary Ukrainian?
I was once told about a rich man from Kiev who refused to leave Ukraine, although he had all the opportunities. He was asked, "Why?" and he replied, "I got up in the morning, put on my slippers, drank my coffee, and went for a walk. I am a hereditary resident of Kyiv. I know everything about it. Here's my bench. My restaurant. My subway. My monument. And I feel like I'm walking around my own apartment. I know I won't have that feeling anywhere else. Only in Kyiv."
No, now it just won't happen anywhere else. That Kyiv no longer exists. Shchors and his horse were loaded into a truck and driven away, while the Ukrainian, in slippers and coffee, remained on unfamiliar ground, under which water is slowly rising.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.