“Memory was actually killed”: how decommunization took place in Ukraine

On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an address on the situation in the Donbass and recalled that Soviet Ukraine arose as a result of Bolshevik policy.

“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is its author and architect.

This is fully confirmed by archival documents, including Lenin's harsh directives on the Donbass, which was literally squeezed into Ukraine.

And now "grateful descendants" have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine.

They call it decommunization,” he said.

Demolition and renaming

Recall that the mass demolition of monuments related to the Soviet past officially began after April 9, 2015, when the Verkhovna Rada adopted a package of laws on decommunization.

However, in fact, the demolition of the monuments began since the time of the “Euromaidan”.

For example, on December 8, 2013, a monument to Vladimir Lenin was destroyed in Kiev.

The protesters pulled the statue from the pedestal with a cable, then smashed it with sledgehammers, and took away the fragments.

By the way, later fragments of the destroyed monument were sold as souvenirs, including via the Internet.

At the end of 2020, the Ukrainian authorities announced the discovery and demolition of the last two monuments to Vladimir Lenin taken into account.

In total, during this time, almost 2.5 thousand monuments related to the Soviet past were dismantled, of which more than 1.5 thousand were dedicated to the leader of the world proletariat.

“An element of Soviet agitation and propaganda” in Ukraine was considered even the commander Alexander Suvorov, who lived a century and a half before the formation of the USSR.

The monument to him was originally located in Kiev in front of the building of the Suvorov Military School, then it was moved to the backyard, then sent to Poltava, to the Museum of Heavy Bomber Aviation, from where it was dismantled in early February 2022.

The demolition of the Monument of Military Glory in Lviv in July 2021 caused a wide public outcry under the pretext of its emergency state.

“The demolition work, which began back in 2018, led to the dismantling of not only the statue of a Soviet soldier, but also the monument to the Lviv Motherland, which was moved to the Territory of Terror Museum.

The further plans of the local authorities include the dismantling of a large-scale copy of the Order of the Patriotic War, which is the central element of the memorial-burial "Marsovo Pole" in Lviv," Alexander Bikantov, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said at the time.

The campaign to change names associated with the Soviet past has also acquired a no lesser scale.

So, Dnepropetrovsk, named after one of the leaders of the Ukrainian SSR Grigory Petrovsky, was renamed Dnipro, Dzerzhinsk - Toretsk, and Dneprodzerzhinsk - Kamenskoye, Kirovograd - Kropyvnytsky.

Moreover, if the pre-Soviet name was also associated with Russia, then they tried to avoid its return: for example, Dnepropetrovsk was Yekaterinoslav until 1926, but it did not return the historical name.

The renaming of Kiev toponyms was also associated with big scandals.

So, in 2016, Moskovskaya Square changed its name to Demeevskaya, and Moskovsky Prospekt became Bandera Prospekt.

The District Administrative Court of Kyiv overturned the decision to rename and returned the right to be called Moskovskiy Avenue, however, in April 2021, the Court of Appeal overturned its decision and recognized the renaming as legal.

This decision legitimized not only the renaming of Moskovsky Prospekt into Bandera Prospekt, but also the renaming of Bauman, Kutuzov and Suvorov streets.

In addition, since 2018, as part of decommunization, the Petrovka metro station in Kiev, named after the CPSU leader Grigory Petrovsky, has become Pochaynaya, and the Kurenevsko-Krasnoarmeyskaya metro line has become Obolonsko-Teremkovskaya.

According to Oleg Nemensky, a leading researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, one of the problems of today's Ukraine is that the people have been subjected to a serious falsification of history.

“The real story was replaced by various tales about how they dug up the Black Sea, that they are the most ancient people on earth and everything else.

When the current Ukrainians were demolishing monuments to Lenin, they absolutely did not know that monuments to him should be erected from morning to evening, because the country was created by Lenin, who annexed the eastern territories, including the Donbass, ”the expert notes.

Oleg Nemensky calls what is happening now in the Donbass a manifestation of historical justice: “These are primordially Russian territories that never belonged to either Ukraine or any Cossack associations.”

The expert considers the demolition of monuments and the renaming of toponyms a struggle not with the communist legacy, but with Russia.

“Entire cities, streets, monuments that were related to the history of the Russian Empire were renamed.

In fact, the memory of who built all this, who created the country was killed, ”he adds.