Today, on 9 December, a monument to one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Mykola Shchors, was dismantled on the Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv. It took almost seven hours for the seven-tonne structure to be dismantled by the Kyivblagoustrii utility company specialists. Photographer Yevhen Zavhorodniy documented the process of lowering the statue from its pedestal to the ground.
In April 2023, the Kyiv City Council decided to eradicate from public spaces all statues, memorials, and busts related to the Russian Federation and associated with the Soviet past. The list of monuments recommended for demolition included the Shchors monument.
In November this year, the government decided to demolish the monument to Mykola Shchors. The demolition began at seven in the morning on 9 December 2023. It was decided that the demolition would take place on a day off in order not to paralyse traffic in the center of Kyiv. Due to the complexity of the process, traffic on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard was partially blocked because of the heavy machinery involved.
Photographer Yevhen Zavhorodniy arrived at the site at seven in the morning. He did not want to miss the process of demolition. " I have an example when they were installing a trident on the shield of the Motherland Monument. Colleagues who were five to ten minutes late did not make it. The process was very fast," Zavhorodniy explains. Nevertheless, it took the workers almost seven hours to dismantle the Shchors sculpture.
"I arrived very early and saw the workers carefully removing the sculpture, sawing off its base," says Yevhen. I compared it to the demolition of the monument near the People's Friendship Arch when the utility workers tried to do everything very carefully. It was like a dentist who cannot pull a tooth at once and at the same time tries not to hurt the patient. Then the head of the monument was cut off and the legs were cut off. Instead, the Shchors monument was carefully separated from its base and lowered. But it took a long.”
The overall atmosphere at the scene was very comfortable and pleasant, says Yevhenii Zavhorodnii. Many journalists and photographers gathered, and the utilities did not interfere with filming. Passing cars often honked in support of the demolition. "We wanted to capture an interesting event, not a "hit" in a residential area of the city," says the photographer. A few years ago there might have been opposition to demolishing the monument, but now no one's resisting or rallying.
"I got angles that made it look like the sculpture was suffering on the picture. I noticed it when I was going through the footage. I have to say that it was not out of any kind of ideological sympathy for the monument. I probably just felt sorry for the horse whose legs were being cut off," says Yevhen with a smile. Some of the photos show graffiti calling for the monument to be torn down. This is a kind of reference to the 80s and 90s of the last century, when monuments to Lenin were massively demolished and various inscriptions were written upon them," Yevhen explains.
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The monument to Mykola Shchors stood on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard for almost 70 years. The bronze sculpture was installed in April 1954. It was erected to mark the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Council. The monument was created by the sculptor Mykhailo Lysenko and two of his students, Mykola Sukhodolov and Vasyl Borodai. The sculpture is made as a classical monument: Shchors sits on a horse and greets Kyiv residents and visitors with his right hand raised. The sculpture is currently exhibited in the Antonov State Aviation Museum of Ukraine.
The material was created with the support of The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Katya Moskalyuk
Photo editor: Marusya Maruzhenko
Literary Editor: Julia Futei
Site Manager: Vladislav Kuhar
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Today, on 9 December, a monument to one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Mykola Shchors, was dismantled on the Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv. It took almost seven hours for the seven-tonne structure to be dismantled by the Kyivblagoustrii utility company specialists. Photographer Yevhen Zavhorodniy documented the process of lowering the statue from its pedestal to the ground.
In April 2023, the Kyiv City Council decided to eradicate from public spaces all statues, memorials, and busts related to the Russian Federation and associated with the Soviet past. The list of monuments recommended for demolition included the Shchors monument.
In November this year, the government decided to demolish the monument to Mykola Shchors. The demolition began at seven in the morning on 9 December 2023. It was decided that the demolition would take place on a day off in order not to paralyse traffic in the center of Kyiv. Due to the complexity of the process, traffic on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard was partially blocked because of the heavy machinery involved.
Photographer Yevhen Zavhorodniy arrived at the site at seven in the morning. He did not want to miss the process of demolition. " I have an example when they were installing a trident on the shield of the Motherland Monument. Colleagues who were five to ten minutes late did not make it. The process was very fast," Zavhorodniy explains. Nevertheless, it took the workers almost seven hours to dismantle the Shchors sculpture.
"I arrived very early and saw the workers carefully removing the sculpture, sawing off its base," says Yevhen. I compared it to the demolition of the monument near the People's Friendship Arch when the utility workers tried to do everything very carefully. It was like a dentist who cannot pull a tooth at once and at the same time tries not to hurt the patient. Then the head of the monument was cut off and the legs were cut off. Instead, the Shchors monument was carefully separated from its base and lowered. But it took a long.”
The overall atmosphere at the scene was very comfortable and pleasant, says Yevhenii Zavhorodnii. Many journalists and photographers gathered, and the utilities did not interfere with filming. Passing cars often honked in support of the demolition. "We wanted to capture an interesting event, not a "hit" in a residential area of the city," says the photographer. A few years ago there might have been opposition to demolishing the monument, but now no one's resisting or rallying.
"I got angles that made it look like the sculpture was suffering on the picture. I noticed it when I was going through the footage. I have to say that it was not out of any kind of ideological sympathy for the monument. I probably just felt sorry for the horse whose legs were being cut off," says Yevhen with a smile. Some of the photos show graffiti calling for the monument to be torn down. This is a kind of reference to the 80s and 90s of the last century, when monuments to Lenin were massively demolished and various inscriptions were written upon them," Yevhen explains.
The monument to Mykola Shchors stood on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard for almost 70 years. The bronze sculpture was installed in April 1954. It was erected to mark the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Council. The monument was created by the sculptor Mykhailo Lysenko and two of his students, Mykola Sukhodolov and Vasyl Borodai. The sculpture is made as a classical monument: Shchors sits on a horse and greets Kyiv residents and visitors with his right hand raised. The sculpture is currently exhibited in the Antonov State Aviation Museum of Ukraine.
The material was created with the support of The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Katya Moskalyuk
Photo editor: Marusya Maruzhenko
Literary Editor: Julia Futei
Site Manager: Vladislav Kuhar
UAPP is an independent association of professional Ukrainian photographers, designed to protect their interests, support, develop and promote Ukrainian photography as an important element of national culture.
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UAPP represents Ukrainian professional photography in the international photographic community and is an official member of the Federation of European Photographers (FEP) — an international organization representing more than 50,000 professional photographers in Europe and other countries around the world.
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