Case Studies

For more photos of the demolition, please click HERE. 

The same place 9 months before, with the Lenin statue still in a symbolic position in the public space. 

Notice the use of scare quotes in this opening paragraph of RT.com report on the event:

"One of the biggest monuments to the Bolshevik Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin has been toppled in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkov by “activists” who had gathered in their hundreds to watch it being sawn down waiting to get pieces as souvenirs." (Read the full article by clicking on the photo)

Anti-Russian protesters in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, topple a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin. One protester explains why.

Kharkiv deputy head Ihor Terekhov comments on the "illegal" removal of the monument and reveals the plan to have it re-erected.

Lenin for sale: Body parts from the demolished statue made available for purchase online.

Buy a piece to provide support to "pro-Kiev volunteer battalions in the east"! An intersting proposition. 

December 1, 2013. 

The police are protecting Lening from the protesters.

December 8, 2013.

Lenin is decapitated. Putting a sledgehammer to work. 

December 8, 2013.

A symbolic victory? The absence made present and immediately filled, it seems. Climbing up to the top of the pedestal—prime real estate in terms of relational public space? 

February 3, 2014.

The public space is enriched with new layers of signification and significance. New symbolism? 

The pedestal as a palimpsest. No absence is absolute. Gaps are filled. But is there ever complete erasure? 

Euronews calls the demolition a "symbolic gesture":

“You’re next, Yanukovych” far-right protesters in Kyiv’s Independence Square chanted, as they toppled, then hacked at, a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin.

The gesture is seen as a symbolic challenge to President Yanukovych and his plans for a stronger alliance with Russia, but also widely regarded as a rejection of Moscow’s historic influence on Ukraine.

Created in 1939 for a Soviet exhibition at New York City's World's Fair, the 11-foot statue was installed in Kiev in 1946 when it was realized that the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had somehow remained "Lenin-free" until then. The monument survived the 1991 "iconic moment" only to be toppled in 2013, although attempts to erase it (eg. editing it out from a shot of Bessarabska Square in a promotional video for the Euro 2012 soccer championship in Kiev) and to protest against it (eg. chopping off the statue's nose and arm in June 2009 after the pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's calls for the country to "cleanse itself" of communist symbols) are part of its history.