Turning the pages back... September 9, 1991 (09/09/01)

Turning the pages back...

September 9, 1991

Ten years ago The Ukrainian Weekly reported on the dismantling of the 1,000-ton monument of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin located in Kyiv's central plaza, then called October Revolution Square. In what became part of a nationwide sweep of Lenin statues after Ukraine's newly declared independence, the Kyiv City Council voted to scrap the statue only two days after Ukraine declared its independence.

Today that plaza is the site of a newly unveiled monument to Ukraine's independence. (See The Weekly, September 2, 2001.)

The following is the first news story about the dismantling of the Lenin statue.

* * *

Oleksander Mosiyuk, acting mayor of Kyiv, announced on Thursday, September 5, that the central Lenin monument, formally called the monument to the October Revolution, would begin to be dismantled on Monday, September 9.

The 1,000-ton monument, one of the largest in the disintegrating Soviet Union, is made up of 15 blocks divided by 15 rods and will be dismantled mechanically, block-by-block, over a period of several months, said Mr. Mosiyuk during a news conference.

"The head itself weighs 15 tons," Mayor Mosiyuk said, referring to the Lenin part of the monument, built in 1980. Originally, when the Kyiv City Council voted on August 26 to remove the statue from October Revolution Square, now officially renamed Independence Square, the City Council talked of using explosives. However, an investigation has since revealed that the whole monument and square were built into the metro station below it.

Source: "1,000-ton Lenin to be dismantled," The Ukrainian Weekly, September 8, 1991, Vol. LIX, No. 36.

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