The demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine started during the fall of the Soviet Union and continued to a small extent throughout the 1990s, mostly in some western Ukrainian towns, though by 2013 most Lenin statues in Ukraine remained standing. During Euromaidan in 2013–2014, the destruction of statues of Lenin become a widespread phenomenon and became popularly known in Ukraine as Leninopad (Ukrainian: Ленінопад, Russian: Ленинопад), a pun literally translated as "Leninfall",[1] with the coinage of "-пад" being akin to English words suffixed with "fall" as in "waterfall", "snowfall", etc.
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The demolition of Lenin monuments in Ukraine happened in four stages. During the 1990s, more than 2,000 Lenin monuments were demolished in western part of Ukraine, at the turn of the 1990–2000s more than 600 Lenin monuments were removed in western and central areas, in 2005–2008, more than 600 were demolished mainly in central areas, and in 2013–2014, 552 monuments were demolished.[2]
The first wave of demolitions of Lenin monuments happened in Western Ukraine in 1990–1991. On 1 August 1990, in Chervonohrad a Lenin monument was demolished for the first time in the USSR.[3] Under popular pressure the monument was dismantled, formally with the purpose of moving elsewhere. That same year, Lenin monuments were dismantled in Ternopil, Kolomyia, Nadvirna, Borislav, Drohobych, Lviv and other cities of Galicia.[4]
In 1991, Ukraine had 5,500 Lenin monuments.[5] In November 2015, approximately 1,300 Lenin monuments were still standing.[5] More than 700 Lenin monuments were removed and/or destroyed between February 2014 and December 2015.[5]
A website "Raining Lenins"[9] tracks the statistics of the fall of Lenin statues in Ukraine.[4]
On 17 March 2016, the largest Lenin monument at the unoccupied territory of Ukraine, 19.8 meters high, was dismantled in Zaporizhzhia.[10] In between the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian Federation and 28 September 2014, the largest Lenin monument at the unoccupied territory was standing in Kharkiv (20.2 m high).[11][12] This statue of Lenin in Kharkiv was toppled and destroyed on 28 September 2014.[13]
The start of the "Leninopad" in its mass was laid by the demolition of the Lenin monument in Kyiv on the Bessarabian Square. The event took place on 8 December 2013 at around 6:00 pm. Even more people began to massively destroy monuments of the Soviet past after reports about the Euromaidan activists who died during the protests in Kyiv.
In January 2015, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine announced that it would encourage all public initiatives related to cleaning Ukraine of monuments to figures of the communist past. According to Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, his department will initiate the removal from the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine of all monuments related to communist figures listed there. "The state will not oppose, but on the contrary, will in every possible way support all public initiatives that will fight for the cleansing of Ukraine from these relics of the totalitarian past," the minister emphasized.[20]
In April 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted in favor of the draft law "On the condemnation of the communist and national socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the prohibition of propaganda of their symbols", which, in particular, will oblige local authorities to dismantle monuments to communist figures on the territory of Ukraine.[21]
Communist monuments toppled during Euromaidan
Lenin Square in Dnipropetrovsk on 22 February 2014 with the demolished monuments to Vladimir Lenin.
Euromaidan protesters toppled several statues of Vladimir Lenin in Ukrainian cities.[22][23][24] Some estimates said that more than 90 statues were toppled.[25] In December 2015, The Ukrainian Week calculated that 376 Lenin monuments were removed or destroyed in February 2014.[5]
The removal of the monuments evoked mixed feelings among the Ukrainian population.[41] In some cases, like in Kharkiv in early 2014,[42] pro-Russian Ukrainian crowds protected the monuments, including members of the communist and socialist parties, as well as veterans of World War II and the Afghan wars.[43] The Statue of Lenin in Kharkiv was toppled on 28 September 2014.[13] Late October 2014, then Kharkiv GovernorIhor Baluta admitted that he thought that the majority of Kharkiv residents had not wanted the statue removed, but said "there was hardly any protest afterward either, which is quite telling".[44]
In January 2015, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine announced that it would encourage any public initiatives related to the cleansing of Ukraine from monuments to figures of the totalitarian communist past.[45]
"It is not by chance that the demonstrations that we saw after the annexation of Crimea in the east and southeast of Ukraine were organized in the squares around the monuments to Lenin, with red flags with a hammer and sickle. What is happening now in Ukraine, what was instigated by Russian aggression, is a clash between the new Ukraine and the old Soviet Union, to which the current Russia is trying to return with the help of Ukraine, seizing parts of its territories.
It is not clear to me why monuments to Lenin are being demolished only now in various cities of Ukraine; why all these 24 years they continued to stand; why didn't the state administration of an independent country demolish them earlier?
Nikiforov, Yevhen (2020). Art for Architecture. Ukraine. Soviet Modernist Mosaics from 1960 to 1990. Kyiv: DOM Publishers. p.300. ISBN978-3-86922-601-9.
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