The Fall of Lenin and the Symbolic Meaning for Art in Ukraine

I follow the Ukraine Today news channel on Facebook and came across an interesting video link to YouTube. It was a large crowd of pro-Ukrainian activists in the city of Kharkiv that, in a frenzy of patriotism, toppled the largest statue of the founder of Soviet Communism (Leninism) Vladimir Lenin. The statue stood 20 meters in height, and remained one of the remnants of the Soviet influence in pre-independence Ukraine. The obvious way to look at this, in lieu of the recent unrest in Ukraine, is a strong stance against the Russians and the assertion of Ukraine moving towards a new future. But what future is that?

Politically, it means the movement of Ukraine forward without the continued encroachment of Russia, meddling in a country that is no longer theirs to meddle in. Culturally, it means shaking off the remaining bonds of Soviet collectivist and Communist ideologies in general. Yet, as this is an art class focusing on the art in 21st century Ukraine, I need to focus more on that aspect. To me, the falling of Lenin symbolizes this new look into Ukrainian art. Lenin himself (in statue form) symbolized this forced fed pride in Russia and the even more forced identifier as Ukrainians as Russian, under the Soviet Union of course. But again, these are all notions that were forced upon the people of Ukraine, not the self realization of a collective nation. Ukrainians have shown time and time again that they want to be their own thing, that instead of thinking of them as a Russian extension but their own political/economic/cultural/ARTISTIC body. This piece of state sponsored art represents everything that the contemporary movement hates and rejects to its dying breath: convention, control, political structure, dominance of power. To me it seemed as though now that this statue was toppled (even though the Ukrainian art movement had been moving in the contemporary direction for quite some time now) Ukraine was [symbolically] artistically free to go about its own way, possibly developing new statues that take shots at every bit of convention and power over the free will of the people that the Lenin statue represented. This also shows the rejection of this old world that Ukraine is so often aligned with in the West. This simple act of national pride showed the West how much they resent the past as a sphere of the USSR, and that Ukraine should not be associated with such archaic notions as “Communism” or “Leninism.” By shaking of this earthly shackle of a world long past, Ukrainian art should now be allowed to flourish in a world that still thinks of them as part of “the Old Soviet Union” and go forth into a new horizon in which Ukraine becomes Ukraine, leaving behind the old world ways.