Since 2013, the plinth at the bottom of Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv has been eerily empty. The scruffy monument is daubed in white paint and graffiti. Someone has stuck a Ukrainian trident where Vladimir Lenin once stood. A crowd toppled the sculpture during Ukraine's Maidan revolution and smashed it with sledgehammers.
Zelenskyy Proposes Mazepa
In June, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed putting a new figure on the plinth: Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack military and political leader who broke with Moscow and fought for Ukraine's independence. 'I am certain that where Lenin fell, Mazepa will stand firm,' Zelenskyy said. He spoke next to a bust of Mazepa in the Pechersk Lavra, an ancient Kyiv monastery hit by Russian missiles.
Debate on National Identity
The proposed swap has triggered a lively debate about monuments and changing national identity. After independence in 1991, Ukraine removed many Soviet-era statues and renamed streets as part of 'decommunisation'. The process sped up in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea, and moved faster after Putin's 2022 full-scale invasion.
Nataliia Kryvda, a professor of the history of culture at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, said Ukraine was going through an unfinished period of decolonisation. 'The USSR absorbed national cultures. It tried to make a single nation of Soviet citizens. Russia today looks at Ukraine and says we are one people. It isn't true. We have our own mindset, historical destiny, beliefs and dreams. Our identity is a dynamic process,' she said.
Standing next to the ex-Lenin plinth, Kryvda said she was in favour of a Mazepa monument. 'Why not? He's our leader. Each culture needs to mark its space with memorials. They objectify memory,' she said. She described Mazepa as a 'contradictory personality' and not an 'ideal hero'. 'He really was a friend and political partner of Russia, right up until the moment he dramatically changed his life and history,' she added.
Historical Context
As hetman of Cossack Ukraine, Mazepa sought to balance Moscow and Warsaw. In 1708, Peter the Great refused to protect Ukrainian territory from invading Swedes. Mazepa abandoned the tsar and formed an alliance with Swedish King Charles XII, an act that ended in defeat and led the Bolsheviks to call modern Ukrainian patriots 'Mazepists'. Kryvda said: 'Mazepa was the architect of European Ukraine.'
In his speech, Zelenskyy said Russia had smeared Mazepa for centuries as a traitor, aiming to make Ukrainians 'view their own history through the eyes of others'.
Broader Cultural Shift
Alim Aliev, a writer and Crimean Tatar campaigner, said Ukraine was belatedly recovering its identity. 'We are reclaiming our own voices and names,' he said. He cited poet Vasyl Stus, whose image will appear on a new banknote. Aliev said it was appropriate that statues of Pushkin had been taken down, citing Pushkin's 'totally imperial view of Crimea'.
Last month, a monument to Mikhail Bulgakov was removed from outside his former home. Kyiv's city council voted to remove it. The museum's director, Liudmyla Habianuri, said she was not opposed. She noted Bulgakov wrote negatively about Ukrainian nationalist forces in his novel The White Guard. 'Bulgakov was a witness to his times. And a satirist. He didn't like anybody. That included communists and priests,' she said.
Habianuri said Russia's war prompted Ukrainians to ask: 'Who am I? It's a very painful question. If I speak Russian and watch Russian films and the Russians are killing me then I must give all that up. Then I'm Ukrainian. And if I'm Ukrainian, I must become Ukrainian as quickly as possible.'
She praised the toppling of Lenin's statue, saying: 'The man was an enemy of humanity itself.' But she questioned whether the plinth was a fitting spot for Mazepa, noting the Germans hanged people there during WWII.
Preservation of Removed Statues
Unlike Lenin, the Bulgakov statue was carefully packed and returned to the sculptor's family. His daughter Kateryna declined a request for it to be photographed, saying she had given official guarantees the monument would remain 'out of public space'. 'These are not my whims. The sculpture is not my property. I am the guarantor of its preservation,' she said.
At Pechersk Lavra, tourists walked past the new Mazepa bust. One visitor, Olena Polishchuk, said: 'He's a famous man. I'm glad he's being commemorated. He's an important part of our history.'
