Vyatrovych: There is no more Lenin in the cities controlled by Ukraine, and his shadow is too thick

In the Ukrainian cities that are under the control of the authorities in Kyiv, there is no longer a single monument to the leader of the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, said the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Vladimir Vyatrovych.

The newspaper "Komersant" reports that Vjatrovič allowed the possibility that some monuments remained in villages or in businesses.

"According to our information, there are no more Lenins in the cities on the territory controlled by Ukraine," said Vyatrovych, whom Kommersant calls a well-known ideologue of Ukraine's decommunization.

According to Vyatrovich, a total of 2.389 Soviet monuments were removed, of which 1.320 were Lenin's.

He stated that most of them were destroyed because they are plaster statues that "represent neither material nor historical value". The bronze figures were melted down or given to museums, and a few were saved for the museum of "monumental Soviet propaganda" that should open at the end of the year in Kiev.

When asked by journalists what will happen to the pedestals, Vyatrovič said that most of them will be removed because "Lenin's shadow is too thick" but that in smaller places, where the monuments of the Bolshevik leaders were located in the city center, monuments to "heroes of the war" could be erected against Russia".

"For decommunization, it is not only the result that is important, that all Lenins and (the first head of the Soviet secret police, Felix) Dzerzhinsky disappear from the map of Ukraine, from the streets and squares. The process is also important," said Vyatrovych.

A Ukrainian law "condemning totalitarian communist and national socialist regimes" banning the display of Soviet symbols was adopted in 2015. It provided for the removal of Soviet monuments and the renaming of locations named after Soviet politicians.

In March, the tallest monument to Lenin in the whole country was demolished in Zaporizhia, and the parliament changed the names of 152 populated places. Thus, in May 2016, Dnipropetrovsk became Dnipro.

The first wave of demolitions of Lenin monuments took place in western Ukraine in 1990 and 1991. Many others were demolished during the crisis in the winter of 2013-2014, and the process was named "Leninopad".

The Ukrainian presidency also said that the removal of the monument was carried out in accordance with the law on decommunization.

"Ukraine has approved decommunization by law and is acting accordingly. We, like the Poles, do not touch the monuments to those who died in the Second World War, but the monuments to Lenin must be destroyed. Likewise, we do not defend the creation of museums for former idols," he said. is a presidency official who asked to remain anonymous.

The spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, previously stated regarding the Ukrainian law on decommunization that "the dismantling of the common history that the political establishment of Ukraine is engaged in is incomprehensible" and that "the Kyiv regime is neither the first nor the last to try to reform the country at the expense of nationalist manipulations". Komersant writes.