When Statues Fell
I first visited Ukraine in May 2004, travelling across the country on a six-day film shoot. In the quiet hours before and after filming, I wandered the streets of Kyiv and Odesa, film camera in hand, drawn to the streets and statues of their urban landscapes.
Fourteen years later, I found myself back in Kyiv — again for work, again with little time — retracing those same streets to see what, if anything, had changed. In the intervening years, Ukraine had endured seismic upheavals: two mass uprisings, the annexation of Crimea, and a brutal war that has settled uneasily into stalemate.
Yet walking through the capital, you could easily miss any hint of turmoil. Kyiv now gleamed like any modern European city, its skyline crowded with glass towers and LED-lit facades — a city racing skyward. This construction boom was the most visible change. But another, more symbolic transformation awaited me at my old hotel on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard.
The statue of Lenin that once stood outside had vanished. In its place bloomed a neat flower bed.
All 1,320 statues of Lenin across the country have been dismantled, part of a broader attempt to shed the cultural and psychological remnants of its communist past.
That absence tells a bigger story. Since 2015, Ukraine has officially embarked on a campaign of Decommunization — a legal effort to remove Soviet-era symbols and monuments from public life. All 1,320 statues of Lenin across the country have been dismantled, part of a broader attempt to shed the cultural and psychological remnants of its communist past. From Poland to Latvia, similar purges have taken place, but in Ukraine, the process carries deeper significance. It represents not only a break from history but from a hostile neighbour.
Both of Ukraine’s revolutions — the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Maidan uprising a decade later — were driven by a desire to resist Russian influence and move closer to Europe. That path has been costly: more than 10,000 Ukrainians have died since Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014.
And yet, not all Soviet symbols have disappeared. Perhaps the grandest of them all — the People’s Friendship Arch — still looms over Kyiv. Built in 1982 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the USSR and Kyiv’s 1,500th year, the arch was meant to embody unity between Ukraine and Russia. Today, it stands in a kind of purgatory. Plans announced in 2016 call for its eventual removal and replacement with a memorial to veterans of the war in Crimea.
In the meantime, the arch has taken on new meanings. It serves as the backdrop to a funfair and garish soda advertisements, and at times it glows with the rainbow colours of the LGBT flag — a statement of inclusiveness and defiance against Russia’s intolerance.
Kyiv, and much of western Ukraine, now look westward with determination. In 2014, the country signed an Association Agreement with the European Union — an extraordinary commitment to reform without any guarantee of membership. The road ahead remains steep. Despite the city’s modern veneer, Ukraine is still the second-poorest nation in Europe, and in the Russian-controlled east, Soviet relics and Lenin statues still stand defiantly in place.
Ukraine’s transformation is far from complete, but its direction feels irreversible. The flowers that now bloom where Lenin once stood may seem modest — yet they speak volumes about a nation determined to redefine itself, one symbol at a time.
