The toppling of the Lenin idol in Kyiv

December 9, 2013 · Kyiv, Vestibule, Ukraine

Yesterday, December 8, in Kyiv, at the intersection of Khreshchatyk and Shevchenko Boulevard, they toppled the godless Soviet idol Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

TOPPLING THE LENIN MONUMENT — SEVERING THE UMBILICAL CORD WITH THE GOD-FIGHTING PAST

Natalia MATLASHENKO, historian, religious scholar

Toppling of the Lenin monument in Kyiv The Lenin monument in the Ukrainian capital has been toppled. Let me immediately note that, with great reluctance, those who wish to play at snobbery can afford to ferment over the unaesthetic nature of the spectacle from this episode of today’s revolution. However, today I, as a historian by profession, as a person who identifies as a Christian in worldview, wish to address first of all those who consciously make the sign of the cross upon themselves.

For myself, I have defined the ideology prevailing in neighboring Russia as “historical schizophrenia.” Let me remind you that this mental disorder is characterized by manifestations of a split consciousness. After all, what else can you call a phenomenon in which, in that state, the Patriarchate daily supports authoritarian Putin’s rule, affirms a cult of the martyrdom of the tsar’s family, canonizes the martyrs of the 20th century destroyed by the bloody revolution of 1917 and the Bolsheviks, while at the same time the “October” revolution holiday is celebrated practically at the state level. I do not recall a single statement from the side of the Moscow Patriarchate that unequivocally condemns the glorification of the Bolshevik regime and its heroes. But the greatest pain, in my opinion, for millions of the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church should be caused by the still-present Lenin mausoleum on Red Square. I remind you that the Kremlin has always been a holy site of Russian Orthodoxy, and the mausoleum stands under its walls.

Much has been written about the atrocities of the Bolsheviks resulting from direct and unambiguous orders by Lenin. I will only remind the mourners of the monument of a few: as early as 1918 they drowned Bishop Hermogen of Tobolsk; Patriarch Tikhon of the ROC was arrested in 1922 and after torture died in 1925; in 1922 Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd was shot; a few years later his successor, Archbishop Thaddeus of Tver, was drowned in a pit of sewage in 1937; in the same year the abbot of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was also shot. And thousands upon thousands of names of ordinary destroyed priests, monks, and nuns probably can never be established by name … Are these facts not enough for the Orthodox people of Russia, led by their influential hierarchy, to have long demanded the destruction of any mention of the symbols of that totalitarian regime?!

As for Kyiv — at the end of January 1918, in the Kyivan Cave Monastery, the Bolsheviks shot Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv. After committing the murder, they raised the body of the hierarch on bayonets and mocked him. Perhaps someone hopes that “good old grandfather Lenin” was not in the loop? In the early 1920s from his pen comes the expression: “A priestly head for us is a stump on which the party hews its communist stakes.”

Regarding the accusations that destroying this idol is an act of vandalism … A few more facts for restoring the memory of those who still have not decided what they believe in and what symbols exactly they worship. The list is considerable, and this is only for Kyiv: they began with the Church of the Tithes, was it not because the relics of the illuminator of Ukraine-Rus Volodymyr, his wife Anna, and Princess Olga rested there, destroyed in 1928. During the 1930s, in Kyiv alone the following were completely or almost completely destroyed: St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, the Epiphany Cathedral, the Resurrection Church, the Church of Boris and Gleb, the Church of Peter and Paul in Podil, St. Nicholas’s Church, St. George’s Cathedral, and part of the Vydubychi Monastery. Do not doubt that the same fate awaited St. Sophia of Kyiv: in 1934 information appeared in the world press about preparations for the destruction of this holy site in 1935. Was it not because, on the initiative of the architect W. Milner from England, the intent to prepare this action was announced to the whole world in The Times, that the hand of the criminals was stopped?

I, like many of my colleagues, was outraged by the footage of the Sunday events on November 24, when, only the second day after the state-level commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Great Famine of 1933, rows of Berkut members stood cordoning off the Lenin monument, when no one had yet attempted to touch it. Did such actions not push towards the decision to put an end to this cult once and for all?

Do not make for yourself an idol It was this year, again at the state level, that we celebrated the next anniversary of the Baptism of Ukraine. We declare our belonging to Christianity when our presidents take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine, placing their hand on the Gospel … Do our state helmsmen not ponder what an outrage to the feelings of believers this monument in the center of the capital was? However, truly believers, and not those who use their Orthodoxy only as a PR stunt.

The toppling of the Lenin monument for me is like cutting the umbilical cord with our past and that truly satanic ideology that sanctified the destruction of millions of our compatriots. By this we have once again been able to prove that Ukraine is not Russia. Unfortunately, in over twenty years our authorities have failed to do this in another way.

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