Today, December 9, a monument to one of the Bolshevik leaders Nikolay Shchors was dismantled on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv. Specialists of KP “Kyivblagoustria” worked on the dismantling of the seven-ton structure for almost seven hours. Photographer Yevhenii Zavgorodny documented the process of descending the figure from the pedestal to the ground.
In April 2023, the Kiev Council adopted a decision to remove from the public space memorial objects, monuments and individual busts related to the Russian and Soviet past. The Shchors monument was included in the list of monuments recommended for dismantling.
The government decided to dismantle the monument to Nikolai Shchors in November of this year. On December 9, 2023, at seven in the morning, the process of demolition of the monument began. They decided to carry out the dismantling on a weekend day, so as not to paralyze the movement through the center of Kiev. They partially blocked traffic on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, because heavy equipment was involved due to the complexity of the process.
Photographer Yevgeny Zavgorodny arrived at the scene at seven in the morning. He did not want to miss the dismantling process. “I had an example when they installed a trident on the shield of the monument to the Motherland. Colleagues who were five to ten minutes late did not have time, because the process took place very quickly,” Zavgorodnyi explains. However, the municipal workers worked on the dismantling of the sculpture of Shchors for almost seven hours.
“I arrived very early and saw how the workers tried to carefully dismantle the sculpture: they sawed its base,” Evgeny shares. “I compared it to the demolition of the monument near the Arch of Friendship of Peoples, when the communal workers tried to do everything very carefully. It turned out like a dentist who can not immediately pull out a tooth and at the same time tries not to hurt the patient. Then the head of the monument was torn off, and the legs were cut off. Instead, the Schors monument was carefully separated from the base and lowered down. But we spent a lot of time on it.”
Evgeny Zavgorodny says that in general, a very comfortable and pleasant atmosphere reigned at the event site. A lot of journalists and fellow photographers gathered, the municipal workers did not interfere with the shooting. Cars passing by often signaled in support of the dismantling. “We were going to shoot an interesting event, not an “arrival” in a residential area of the city,” says the photographer. A few years ago, opposition forces could oppose the demolition of the monument, but now there has been no opposition or rally.
“I had such angles as if the sculpture was suffering in the frame. Noticed when I rewatched the footage. I will say right away that this is not because of ideological sympathy for the monument. I must have just felt sorry for the horse, whose legs are sawn off,” Evgeny says with a smile. Separate photos show graffiti that called for the demolition of the monument. “A kind of reference to the eighties and nineties of the last century, when Lenin's monuments were massively demolished and various inscriptions were written on it,” says Evgeny.
Monument to Nikolai Shchors stood on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard for almost 70 years. The bronze sculpture was installed in April 1954 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Council. The authors of the monument were sculptor Mykhailo Lysenko and two of his students — Nikolai Sukhodolov and Vasily Boroday. The sculpture is made like a classic monument: Schors sits on a horse and with his raised right hand greets Kyiv residents and guests of the city. Currently, the sculpture will be kept in the State Aviation Museum of Ukraine named after him. O.K. Antonov.
The material was created with the support of The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
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Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Katya Moskalyuk
Photo editor: Marusya Maruzhenko
Literary Editor: Julia Futei
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