Watching the toppling of Bristol’s Edward Colston monument, I was struck by echoes of the fate of another dubious statue: Kyiv’s Lenin monument. The Bolshevik leader was pulled down in 2013 amid anti-government protests sparked first by the decision to cancel an EU trade deal in favour of closer ties to Russia, but later by police brutality against demonstrators. As with Colston, the toppling of Lenin was inspired by violence from above, but also provided a focal point for larger grievances. The destruction in both cases was relatively spontaneous, but in neither case was it a mindless act: the destructions were targeted, symbolically charged performances.
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Lenin statues are pictured at the open-air museum in Frumushyka-Nova, some 170 km from south Ukrainian city of Odesa on Oct. 4, 2017.
