All Lenin monuments removed from Ukrainian cities
As a result of de-communization in Ukraine, 2,389 monuments were dismantled, of which 1,320 were monuments to communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, said the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Volodymyr Viatrovych.
"According to our information, there are no more Lenin monuments in the Ukrainian cities. Perhaps some are left in the countryside and on the territory of the enterprises. This is because they were never added to the registers; they can only be dismantled after they are discovered," Viatrovych said in an interview with LIGA.net.
According to him, the fates of the demolished monuments vary widely. "Most of them are ordinary plaster figures that do not represent either material or historical value. They were made according to the same criteria. They were destroyed, of course. Those that represent material value, for example if they are made from bronze, could be melted down," he added.
Some have been saved for a museum where several dozen monuments will be exhibited. "I hope that at the end of this year, we will be able to establish such a museum in Kyiv, on the territory of the Expo Center of Ukraine. This will be a museum of the monumental propaganda of the USSR. We will make an announcement about it in the autumn this year. We are talking about several dozen monuments. These will be monumental sculptures. We are not talking about busts; we’re talking very large ones. In addition, I would like there to be some explanation for why we preserved these objects of art: what role they played in history, how they were woven into the information policy of the communist regime," he added.
In early April, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, asked Ukraine to leave at least one monument to Vladimir Lenin, as in her opinion, he is the founder of “Ukrainization” of Ukraine.