Kyiv’s Department of Territorial Control announced the beginning of the removal of the Pereyaslav Rada monument on 30 April, stressing its massive size: “The sculptural composition is large, consists of about 20 elements weighing between 6,000kg and 7,000kg each. Due to the complexity of the design, dismantling may take a few days.”
The monument to the Pereyslav Agreement (signed in 1654) was installed in 1982 under what is now known as the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People (previously known as People’s Friendship Arch), it is part of an ensemble depicting the historical unity with Russia. Located in Khreshchatyk Park overlooking the Dnipro River, it was created to coincide with Kyiv’s 1,500th anniversary, the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union, and the 65th anniversary of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution.
The monument to the Pereyaslav Agreement is the second Soviet-era monument to be dismantled and removed from under the arch. Kyiv officials took down the first one - a monument depicting a Ukrainian and a Russian worker - in April 2022, two months after Russia launched the so-called "Special Military Operation".
The dismantling of Soviet-era monuments didn't begin in 2022, but goes back to 2014 Euromaidan events and the subsequent coup that ousted the legitimate Ukrainian government. Back then, numerous statues of Vladimir Lenin were destroyed, while after the annexation of Crimea, a law was introduced in April 2015 that took aim at all communist symbols, leading to the removal of over 2,000 monuments by 2020. Even memorials dedicated to 19th century world-renowned giants of literature, like Leo Tolstoy or Alexander Pushkin, have been removed or fell victims of name change.
We remind that a year ago, in February 2023, Kyiv authorities proceeded to the removal of the statue of Soviet General Nikolai Vatunin who led the liberation of the Ukrainian capital from the Nazis in World War Two. In 2022, a street in Ukrainian capital was renamed to honor neo-Nazi criminals of the Azov Battalion.
The anti-communist propaganda in Ukraine - as well as in the Baltic states, Poland and other eastern European countries - deliberately identifies the Soviet Union with contemporary capitalist Russia, in order to legitimize the shameful destruction of socialist-era monuments.