Goodbye, Lenin: Decommunisation and De-imperialisation in Modern Ukraine

Communism, one of the dominant ideologies of the 20th century, has starkly demonstrated its ineffectiveness, economic inefficiency, and inhumanity through the examples of several states. What appeared on paper—in the works of socialist thinkers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—as a near-biblical utopia of social equality, in reality, resulted in terror, ethnic genocide, and military-political dictatorship. This is evidenced by Stalin's GULAG and the Holodomor in the USSR, the impoverished military camp that North Korea has become, and Red China, teetering on the brink of economic collapse.

Thus, it is unsurprising that countries that had been under the political influence of the communist regime immediately initiated the process of decommunisation upon gaining independence. In Europe, this primarily applied to the Warsaw Pact countries—The Gaze has previously written about the de-imperialisation and decommunisation experience of the Czech Republic—as well as Ukraine, which has been resisting armed aggression by the heirs of the communist empire in the guise of the Russian Federation for over a decade.

The Communist Utopia

Photo: Utility workers in the capital are dismantling the golden star, a symbol of the USSR, from the monument on Halytska Square, Kyiv, 4 November 2023, Source:  Collage The Gaze by Leonid Lukashenko

No state has successfully built a true communist society in practice. In China, the ideology transformed into Maoism; in Cuba, into a socialist narcotics cartel; and on the ruins of the Russian Empire, these ideas evolved into Bolshevik dictatorship. Nonetheless, the collective term "communist state" was widely used in Western media to describe the USSR and its ideological satellites during the Cold War. The unresolved consequences of this war, left incomplete in the 20th century, have become challenges for former Soviet republics in the 21st century: Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Belarus.

The convoluted paths of Georgia and Moldova, swaying between the European Union and a return to the "brotherly embrace" of Russia, are unfolding before our eyes. Belarus, at this stage, has effectively lost its sovereignty, turning into a Russian military base armed with nuclear missiles aimed at neighbouring Eurozone countries. Only Ukraine, at great human cost and amidst widespread destruction, is managing to defend its right to be an independent democratic state.

Despite the ongoing war, Ukraine is actively pursuing the removal of communist and imperial legacies, which were forcibly imposed by Russian imperial officials, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and modern Russian agents of influence over decades.

The Legislative Basis for Decommunisation

Photo: Decommunisation of the "Motherland" monument: the Soviet emblem on the shield was replaced with the Ukrainian Tryzub, Kyiv, 1 August 2023

Decommunisation refers to a system of measures and activities, both theoretical and practical, aimed at eliminating the influence and consequences of communist ideology in all spheres of a country's life and society following the collapse of communist regimes.

In 2015, after the annexation of Crimea and the onset of the "hybrid war" initiated by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the country enacted four laws related to decommunisation and state memory policy. These laws mandated the dismantling of Soviet-era monuments and the renaming of places associated with communism, leading to fundamental changes in Ukraine's toponymy and the names of entire cities. By the time of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, more than 50,000 streets, squares, public spaces, and other sites—including major cities and villages—had been renamed.

The decommunisation laws included:

• Law No. 314-VIII, "On the Legal Status and Honouring the Memory of Fighters for Ukraine's Independence in the 20th Century", which granted official recognition to several historical organisations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

• Law No. 315-VIII, "On Honouring Victory over Nazism in World War II (1939–1945)".

• Law No. 316-VIII, "On Access to the Archives of Repressive Organs of the Communist Totalitarian Regime of 1917–1991", which transferred the state archives concerning Soviet-era repressions under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.

• Law No. 317-VIII, "On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes and the Prohibition of Their Symbols", which banned Nazi and communist symbols and the public denial of their crimes.

Leninfall

One of the key symbols of communism and a marker of Russian presence and influence in other states is the monument to Vladimir Lenin. These statues, much like mushrooms after the rain, proliferated across the territories of the former Soviet Union and the neighbouring countries of the Warsaw Pact. Russians, who still keep the embalmed body of their communist leader in a mausoleum on the country’s main square, have consistently reacted with distress to the dismantling of their communist idols.

The first wave of dismantling Soviet totalitarian symbols in Ukraine occurred during the Second World War (1939–1945) for several reasons. Some monuments were spontaneously destroyed by local residents or activists; others were removed under the orders of the German occupying authorities. Many statues were damaged or destroyed during military action, by natural causes, or simply due to neglect.

Subsequent removal of Lenin monuments in Ukraine took place in four stages. During the 1990s, over 2,000 sculptures were dismantled in Galicia and Volhynia. At the turn of the millennium, more than 600 were removed in western and central regions. Between 2005 and 2008, another 600 were taken down, predominantly in central Ukraine. Finally, during 2013–2014, 552 Lenin monuments were toppled.

This process, which had been somewhat slowed by the strong Russian influence since the collapse of the USSR, gained momentum in 2014 during the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity. At that time, it was not the state but ordinary Ukrainians who began deciding the fate of Soviet-era monuments. A spontaneous wave of demolitions of statues of Lenin and other communist figures began in Kyiv. The “Leninfall” was catalysed by the dismantling of the Lenin monument on Bessarabska Square on 8 December 2014 and the flight of President Viktor Yanukovych on 21 February 2014.

The Leninfall and the dismantling of Soviet symbols continue to this day. For instance, in October 2024 alone, 16 monuments, memorial plaques, communist symbols, and Soviet inscriptions were removed from buildings in various Ukrainian cities. In September 2024, approximately 40 objects representing Soviet times were dismantled. A particularly striking example occurred on 16 August 2024, when the central square of the city of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region was cleared of a Lenin monument. In this way, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are even helping Russians rid themselves of the USSR's totalitarian legacy.

What Does Putin's Regime Cling To?

Photo: On 30 April 2024, by decision of the Kyiv City Council, the composition honouring the Pereiaslav Council and the monument to workers, part of the former Arch of Friendship of Peoples in the Pechersk district of the capital, was dismantled. The arch is now named the "Freedom of the Ukrainian People" Arch. The arch itself remains in place, as parts of its structure form a retaining wall to prevent landslides. However, the arch retains a crack, symbolising the definitive break in friendly relations between Ukraine and the criminal Russian Federation

Every Ukrainian remembers the “historic” speech delivered by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on 21 February 2022, announcing the recognition of the so-called DPR and LPR, just days before the full-scale invasion. Among his threats and absurd claims about "Ukraine being created by the Bolsheviks and Lenin," he declared:

"You want decommunisation? We are ready to show you what real decommunisation means for Ukraine."

Unfortunately, every citizen of Ukraine has since experienced the reality of “Russian-style decommunisation.” It involves mass civilian murders, missile strikes, war crimes, looting, torture, executions of prisoners of war, deportations, and kidnappings—including the abduction of Ukrainian children. But why was Putin so enraged by Ukraine’s efforts at decommunisation?

To understand this, one must look at the toponymy of modern Russia. A glance at the map of any Russian region, city, or village reveals how deeply communist symbols are embedded in the country’s public space. Kaliningrad, Engels, Kuybyshev, Lenin Squares, Karl Marx Avenues, and streets named after Kirov, Sverdlov, Zhdanov, and other figures associated with the Red Terror are as pervasive as open wounds across Russia. Is it any wonder that Russians living on streets named after Dzerzhinsky, Chapayev, or Artem are so readily drawn to revanchist slogans like “We can do it again,” plastering their cars with stickers reading “To Berlin!” and dressing their children in pioneer scarves, Budyonovka hats, and World War II-era military tunics?

Photo: Volodymyr Viatrovych, former director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Source: Wikipedia

As historian and Ukrainian MP Volodymyr Viatrovych, former director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, observes:

"Decommunisation in Ukraine was overdue but still a timely policy. It allowed us to halt the inevitable cycle of 'unpunished evil growing stronger.' In contrast, after a brief 'democratic moment' in the early 1990s, Russia deliberately returned to its traditional path of autocracy, totalitarianism, wars, and crimes against humanity. However, decommunised spaces—and, as we’ve seen, the modus vivendi of Ukrainians—meant that Russians wandered through our territories, frantically searching for their familiar 'Kirovskys' and 'Leninskys,' only to find no warm welcome. We knew whom and what we were defending because we had already reclaimed symbolic ownership of our land by renaming our streets."

The schizophrenia of the Russian mentality extends beyond mere nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Even the most ardent supporters of a USSR revival do not want it without American iPhones, German cars, Israeli medicine, and Italian designer clothing. Today’s Russian elite, which finances and supports the war in Ukraine, despises the poverty of Soviet life yet frantically searches for “aristocratic roots.” This simultaneous longing for both the USSR and the Tsarist Empire is reflected in renaming Leningrad back to Saint Petersburg, the cult of the last emperor Nicholas II, and a cultural regression to the styles of the 1960s–1980s. Psychiatrists may one day untangle this cognitive dissonance, though most of their patients deserve not psychoanalysis but a trial at The Hague.

Meanwhile, the “deep” Russian populace essentially continues to live in the USSR, among the same monuments and on the same streets named after Bolsheviks and revolutionaries. As long as this remains the case, it is easy to feed them Soviet propaganda narratives about “NATO threats” and “Ukrainian Nazis,” barely altering the Cold War-era scripts.

Moreover, Soviet communist (and imperial) symbols are one of the few things, aside from bombs and death, that the Russian army brings to occupied territories. Instead of establishing basic living conditions in devastated Ukrainian cities, the Russians prioritise installing Lenin and Pushkin monuments. They also revert to Soviet-era names for these cities: Ukrainian Bakhmut becomes Artemivsk, and Mariupol reverts to Zhdanov.

Breaking Away from the Russian Empire

Photo: The dismantling of the monument to Russian Empress Catherine II on Katerynynska Square, Odesa, 29 December 2022

The Russian Empire has always sought to absorb and assimilate any territories that differed ethnically, culturally, or geographically from its core. From the onset of colonisation, Ukraine faced numerous acts of suppression: the annexation of the Kyiv Metropolis by the Moscow Patriarchate, the abolition of the Hetmanate, the liquidation of the Zaporizhzhian Sich, and the imposition of serfdom. A systematic Russification campaign followed. By the late 18th century, nearly all of Ukraine (excluding Galicia, Zakarpattia, and Bukovyna) was colonised by the Russian Empire, which then initiated efforts to assimilate Ukrainians into the so-called "Russian people." This concept included Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. Similar processes unfolded in Belarus.

Ukraine's economy was gradually restructured to serve as a colonial appendage, supplying raw materials for the Russian economy.

As a result, in addition to the legacy of Soviet-era symbols and toponyms, remnants of the Russian Empire also pervade Ukrainian public spaces. These include street names associated with Russian Federation cities (e.g., Kurska, Smolenska, Moskovska Streets) and toponyms honouring Russian cultural and scientific figures (e.g., Leo Tolstoy Square, Pushkinska Street, Anna Akhmatova Street, Yekaterynynska Street, etc.).

Photo: Historian Oleksandr Alfyorov, head of Kyiv's Expert Toponymic Commission and a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Source: Facebook

"One must acknowledge that the Muscovite state, the Tsardom of Moscow, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Russia’s modern projects are all manifestations of the same state, merely renamed. If we had begun de-imperialisation earlier, we could have fully understood these mechanisms and intricacies," said historian Oleksandr Alfyorov, head of Kyiv's Expert Toponymic Commission and a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

On 21 March 2023, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law "On the Condemnation and Prohibition of the Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy in Ukraine and the Decolonisation of Toponymy." This law established a legal framework for the decolonisation and de-imperialisation processes initiated after Russia’s invasion in 2022. It addresses public spaces, toponymy, the names of legal entities, monuments, and memorial signs, as well as trademarks and service marks.

The law prohibits the propaganda of Russian imperial symbols (with specific exceptions outlined), mandates the removal of such symbols from public spaces, and forbids the assignment of names that glorify, perpetuate, or propagate symbols of Russian imperial policy or contemporary Russia as an aggressor state to geographical objects, legal entities, or property.

What Does Pushkin Have to Do with It?

Photo: The dismantling of the Pushkin monument in Kyiv, 15 November 2023

Under the law on the de-imperialisation and decolonisation of Ukraine, numerous monuments and memorial complexes have been dismantled, including the Shchors monument in Kyiv and several statues of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. These actions sparked significant public debate. Indeed, what does Pushkin, who had no connection to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have to do with the matter?

Here’s how historian Oleksandr Alfyorov explains it:

"Pushkin himself is irrelevant, but… Pushkin, a renowned Russian poet, has been posthumously violated by Bolshevik, imperial, and today’s neo-Bolshevik Putinist ideology. This poet was then used to impose imperial identity on everyone around."

This rings true when comparing the sheer number of monuments and toponyms dedicated to Pushkin in Ukraine with those honouring prominent poets and writers from other neighbouring countries, such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, or even Belarus. Pushkin was used as a cultural marker of imperial and Soviet dominance, his stature inflated to assert the supposed superiority of Russian culture and instil a sense of inferiority in all territories occupied by Russia.

By 2022, Ukraine had 594 streets named after Pushkin, making his name one of the top 10 most widespread toponyms in the country. Unlike Ukrainian cultural figures, Pushkin monuments faced no resistance from authorities during their establishment, a stark contrast to how monuments for prominent Ukrainians were treated. For example, in 1900, the Alchevsky family funded a bust of Taras Shevchenko on private property in Kharkiv. It was soon dismantled by order of the Russian government and replaced—ironically—with a Pushkin monument. This monument, incidentally, was blown up weeks after its unveiling by members of the underground Ukrainian People's Party, suggesting that the "monument wars" in Ukraine have been ongoing for over a century.

Similarly, at the 1903 unveiling of a monument to Ivan Kotliarevsky, the father of modern Ukrainian literature, in Poltava, a secret order from Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav Plehve banned Ukrainian writers from speaking in Ukrainian during the ceremony, dismissing the language as an "unnecessary and seditious dialect."

The ultimate fate and significance of Alexander Pushkin in Ukrainian culture will likely be decided in peacetime. Perhaps figures like Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky will find their place in exhibits on the "imperial period" in future museums, similar to how busts of Lenin, Stalin, and Dzerzhinsky are displayed in the Lviv Museum of Totalitarian Regimes, Territory of Terror.

Photo: The Lviv Museum of Totalitarian Regimes "Territory of Terror"

For now, during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Russian occupiers marching through Ukrainian lands should not encounter any geographical, architectural, or toponymic markers that suggest a shared history or cultural unity between the "brotherly peoples" of Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s treacherous attack has irrevocably ended this externally imposed "brotherhood." In this context, the processes of decommunisation and de-imperialisation aim to restore historical justice and return Ukrainian streets and settlements to the names of truly outstanding Ukrainian public and cultural figures.