Maidan Revolution – Farwell to Image.
“In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
(W.H. Auden. “Musee des Beaux Arts”)
Events that shook Ukraine five years ago look very remote today. The anniversary of the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, the majority of the Ukrainian society met in the state of apathy and total disillusionment in the political class mixed with vague but enthusiastic hopes for the new beginning.
The fatigue resulting from five years of war with the powerful neighbor, constant political turmoil, and unrealized expectations for the radical change of the system left an imprint on the art circles.
Ukrainian artists succeeded to predict the explosion of the Maidan revolution. Large scale paintings by Vasilii Tsagolov depicting violent riots or ironic staged photographs of Nikita Shalenyi related to “Berkut,” the most feared special forces of the regime, created before the beginning of the Maidan confrontation, became chilling prophecies about the events to come. Artists smelled in the air the stinking smoke of the burning tires before the tires were inflamed.
However, they were not only the forecasters of the revolution but also its beneficiaries. For a short time, contemporary art in Ukraine not only gained the lost social function but turned into a vital instrument of revolutionary change.
Oleksiy Radynsky. People Who Came to Power. Documentary, 2015
During the winter of 2013 – 2014 Ukrainian artists unexpectedly found themselves in the detachments of the Revolutionary Insurrection Army, commanded by the anarchist Nestor Makhno in 1918 – 1921, on the barricades of the besieged Madrid in 1936 or on Parisian streets in 1968. If the geography of their time travel could correspond to personal preferences, the ratione temporis was common. They returned to the 20th century, the period when contemporary art was both political and relevant.
One of the potent signs of such unexpected return was a resurrection of the art of the poster. Sharp politically charged images designed by numerous artists and amateurs, circulated on the net for download, printing, and dissemination, instantly covering the walls of the Ukrainian cities. Different political protests turned into involuntary (or voluntary) art performances.
However, quite soon, the picture of Matsekh playing Chopin on the winter street of the revolutionary Kyiv was practically forgotten. It was not frequently reproduced during the celebration of the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity and hardly re-appeared on the pages of the foreign newspapers.
One of such performances gave birth to the iconic image of the Maidan Revolution. On December 7, 2013, Markiyan Matsekh, a young musician, decided to play Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp minor in the front of the police lines. A photograph of a young man playing piano painted in the Ukrainian national colors facing the formation of police blocking access to the government district became viral and soon was published on the first pages of the leading international newspapers. The slim figure of the pianist vis-a-vis the armed to the teeth policemen looking with their helmets and shields like some medieval villains became a symbol of the protest against the brutality of the authoritarian state.
Markiyan Matsekh. Piano performance in front of Presidential Administration. Kyiv,December 2013
It was a powerful iconic image, not less powerful than a photograph of a lonely protester facing a tank on the Tiananmen Square. However, quite soon, the picture of Matsekh playing Chopin on the winter street of the revolutionary Kyiv was practically forgotten. It was not frequently reproduced during the celebration of the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity and hardly re-appeared on the pages of the foreign newspapers. The same fate was awaiting the images of the burning inferno of the revolution violent stage, striking photographs of the war in the East or the debris of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 hit by the Russian missile over the sunflower fields of the Hrabove village.
Such obliviousness was connected not to the general indifference to the events in Ukraine, but to the changes of perception influenced by the digital revolution. Paraphrasing the famous maxima of Andy Warhol, it is possible to say that today, every photograph could become iconic for fifteen minutes. Massive overproduction of images by millions of people clicking their mobile phones continually led to the total depreciation of “iconicity.” The images of violence and despair pouring from every corner of the world became a daily reality of both the dying out printed media and the blossoming online news outlets. The dead Syrian boy on the Greek beach or the Ukrainian protester playing piano at the dump Kyiv street have the same claim for empathy in the situation of the current attention deficit.
As if experiencing a strange memory disorder, we can better remember the images of the “Kiss on the Times Square,” the Vietnam War or the Warsaw Ghetto than photographs of triumphs and tragedies happened just yesterday.
The canon of iconic images became the completed book of the past. Its finality is proving not only the irrelevance of contemporary photography but also the insignificance of the tragic events for those of their remote observers whose lives they didn’t influence directly.
Massive overproduction of images by millions of people clicking their mobile phones continually led to the total depreciation of “iconicity.” The images of violence and despair pouring from every corner of the world became a daily reality of both the dying out printed media and the blossoming online news outlets.
The critics and academics felt the danger of such changes, but Stuart Franklin, the practicing photographer, working for the Guardian, provided the best formulation of it. He wrote, “The new accelerator is social media, where images barely have a chance to circulate as “iconic” before being replaced by others… “Iconic” one moment, then rapidly overtaken by yet more equally devastating pictures emerging …”
Overproduction of the images of suffering resulted in indifference. Those photographs, which could provoke outrage and international outcry just a few decades ago, are consumed today almost with apathy rarely interrupted with short outbursts of anger.
Image is losing its power. It is failing to change the world or even to impress it. Susan Sontag noticed that “The memory of wars, however, like all memory, is mostly local.” In the age of the total attention deficit, we are living through the time on nationalization of trauma. Understanding that the Syrian dead will belong to the Syrians, the Ukrainian dead – to the Ukrainians, is increasing the feeling of victims that the world betrays them (such a betrayal is imaginary sometimes but often quite real).
Unfortunately, the rapidly disappearing relevance of images doesn’t belong only to the realm of photography. It is difficult to imagine today an artwork with a fate similar to the “Guernica” by Picasso, leave aside sit-ins in the front of the canvas which continually happened in the halls of MoMA during the Vietnam War.
The question is, what is the role of an artist in the world dominated by social media, flickering images instantly doomed for oblivion, textual communications shrinking faster than the piece of shagreen in the novel of Honoré de Balzac The Skin of Sorrow?
Boris Groys noticed the problem already ten years ago:
“Contemporary means of communications and networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, and Twitter provide the global population with the possibility to post and arrange their photos, videos, and texts in a way that cannot be distinguished from any other post-conceptual artwork … that means: Today, contemporary art has become a mass cultural practice. So the question arises: How can a contemporary artist survive this popular success of contemporary art? Either, how can the artist survive in a world in which everybody has become an artist, after all?”
the dystopia of fake news and mass manipulation, putting the very existence of democracy in danger, soon changed the idealistic concept of the internet connecting the global village
However, the vision of the philosopher formulated a decade ago was quite optimistic, “…the fact that everybody became an artist today brings not only a danger but also an opportunity to the artist’s position in the society. …To be an artist has ceased to be an exclusive fate – instead, it has become representative for the society as a whole on its most intimate, everyday level.”
Groys wrote his text way before the malicious essence of social media was exposed internationally. During those days, contemporary means of communication seen through the rose-colored lenses of the digital utopianism appeared as a dominant instrument of the global democratization. However, the dystopia of fake news and mass manipulation, putting the very existence of democracy in danger, soon changed the idealistic concept of the internet connecting the global village. Leaving aside the political risks posed by social media, it is difficult not to notice the results of the civilizational shift provoked by the new system of mass communications.
The observation of Groys that “everybody became an artist today” is echoing the dream of the Marxist theoreticians of the 1920s who believed that art would die when it stops to be the elitist practice, and every proletarian will be able to express himself using its means. Today representative of all social strata can express themselves toying with their gadgets. It is proven that not the chosen class of the Marxist theory, but humanity in general became caretaker of the art. Artists indeed lost their “exclusive fate”; however, did they become “representatives of the society” in the long run remains to be seen. If during the Maidan Revolution Ukrainian artists for a short time gained such a status, current situation is different. The problem is not the politics of dissemination of the artistic message, but the message itself. Moreover, the question is not only about the content but also about the form of such a message.
Today representative of all social strata can express themselves toying with their gadgets. It is proven that not the chosen class of the Marxist theory, but humanity in general became caretaker of the art.
Since 1980s when the Ukrainian contemporary art made it first steps transforming tradition of Socialist realist painting into peculiar local form of transavantgarde it was dominated by the old fashioned passion for the “grand painting”, which later in a result of the medium crisis mutated into a vague but dominant wish to create a “masterpiece.” The new generation of Ukrainian artists didn’t escape this obsession with the production of the magnum opus, often employing monumental forms for their conceptual projects. This conceptual monumentalism became a particular specialty of the local art scene. It manifested itself in such works, as a section of the old brick wall in the shape of the map of Ukraine (with a fragment of Crimea outline broken away from it) by Zhana Kadyrova. Another example is an installation “The Black Siberia” by Nikita Shalenyi, for which he used hundreds of black towels manufactured in China displayed in a way that they looked like the endless Siberian Forest.
Zhanna Kadyrova. Untitled. Sculpture, 2014. Photo from the exhibition “Permanent Revolution” at Ludwig Museum (Budapest, Hungary, 2018)
However, if the mentioned artists are specializing in the production of the colossal visual metaphors, the younger generation of post-conceptual artist deprived of the excessive passion for visuality didn’t escape the national predisposition for gigantomania. The exposition of the Ukrainian pavilion at the recent Venice Biennale proves such a thesis.
In the age of the digital revolution, the grand narrative of contemporary Ukrainian art looks outdated. Such outmodedness is giving a certain consoling but erroneous feeling that what is impossible in the West is still possible in Ukraine, calling in mind the discussion of the 1980s about the impossibility of novel in the developed countries when it is still was viable in Latin America because of its cultural backwardness.
what is impossible in the West is still possible in Ukraine, calling in mind the discussion of the 1980s about the impossibility of novel in the developed countries when it is still was viable in Latin America because of its cultural backwardness
It is interesting that in the age of depreciation of image and domination of the new oversimplified mass-cult molded by social media and interpreted by Groys as the “total contemporary art,” the power of narration proved to be less tinted by new civilizational shifts than other fundamental elements of culture. The resurrection of the phenomena of serialization in the form of the TV series is rapidly becoming a surrogate of the 19th-century novel published in installments. Such a mutation is proving that the narrative is not killed yet by the Twitter-like condensation of a message. The world, which is rapidly forgetting how to talk, is still able to consume long tales if not in writing, then, in cinematic form.
If the grand metaphor is doomed today for a short life of a mayfly, the storytelling is still looking possible.
There are different strategies of such a narration used by contemporary Ukrainian artists. In the time of the disappearance of “iconic” image, Aleksandr Chekmenev is relying on the old device of the serial photography already developed at the beginning of the 20th century by August Sander, the famous German photographer. Chenkmenev’s series based on the persistent repetition of powerful thematically united images are morphing together into the endless contemporary version of Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time), the famous book of Sander published in 1929. Unlike his great predecessor, the Ukrainian photographer prefers to produce different but at the same time semblable portraits of people, photographed in the same context (dwellings of the poor, hospitals, war zones). In a result of this, his repetitive catalogues of the contemporary Ukrainian human types became able to relate a story of the pauperized population suffering or anguish of the victims of war.
Alexander Chekmenev. After the Battle. Color photography, 2014
The narrative also could be linear, like in the work of an artist Alevtina Kahidze, “The story of Klubnika Andriivna, or Zhdanovka” dedicated to the life of her late mother in the village in Donbas under the occupation. The artist is telling a touching and quite a personal story about the survival tactics in the gray zone controlled by the so-called “peoples republic” of the Russian sponsored separatists. Her tale is not deprived of the black humor – to call their relatives in Kyiv people of the village has to go to the local cemetery – the only place, where for some unexplainable reason the mobile roaming is available.
Alevtina Kakhidze. The Story of Strawberry Andriivna or Zhdanivka. Installation, 2014-2014. “Permanent Revolution” exhibition at Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary, 2018
Narration could also be stripped of any logic and transformed into the crowding of the powerful subconscious images of pain and despair, like in the series of drawings “Kyiv Diary” by Vlada Ralko, demonstrating her perception of the perils of the violent stage of the revolution. The maniac multiplication of the nightmares divested of any plot and united only by the surreal horror are helping to elevate the personal pain of the artist to the level of the collective trauma of the nation.
Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary. Mixed media on paper, 2013-2015
The passion for storytelling also reflected in the video works of Mykola Ridnyi and Oleksyi Radinskyi. Both artists manifested the trend in the Ukrainian video art rapidly moving in the direction of the narrative documentary cinema.
However, such works created during the revolution and the first stages of the war appeared at the moment when a narrative was needed, and stories had to be told. They proved that the art created in the time of plague had to be about the plague.
The question is, what is the future of these works and their creators? What can artists do in the period when the plague lost its novelty and instead of the high tragedy of the first days of the disaster turned into everyday reality, into something happening on the background? Could they be able to find another story to tell as powerful as that one which was already told?
Will they be forgotten as the once iconic photograph of the piano player confronting the rough power of the state, or will they collect dust in the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity, designed by Jan Kleihues and Johannes Kressner, two respected German architects, if, of course, it will be constructed one day?
What will happen to the works reflecting the reality of the Maidan revolution, when both the artistic creations and the revolution itself so fast acquired the patina of history? Will they be forgotten as the once iconic photograph of the piano player confronting the rough power of the state, or will they collect dust in the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity, designed by Jan Kleihues and Johannes Kressner, two respected German architects, if, of course, it will be constructed one day?
Fallen Idols or the Deficit of Useful Past
“Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.” (Exodus, 23.24)
“My friend, if we love truth more than the fine arts, let us pray God for some iconoclasts.” (Denis Diderot, Magazin Encyclopédique, III, 1795)
“Le mort saisit le vif. (French saying)
The policy of decommunization became one of the most visible and probably the most controversial outcomes of the Maidan Revolution. On the one hand, it manifested the overdue necessity to cast farewell to the Soviet legacy, on the other, it gained strong post-colonial overtones and developed into the essential elements of an attempt to create new national mythology with strong ideological aftertaste. Ukrainian iconoclasm was not unique but strikingly late. The country started to deal with its past nearly two decades later than other post-communist states from Central Europe to the Baltics.
The policy of decommunization became one of the most visible and probably the most controversial outcomes of the Maidan Revolution.
The impending collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991was manifested by the demolition of one symbolically charged monument in Moscow and one in Kyiv. In Moscow it was a statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founding father of the Soviet secret police, adoring a round flowerbed in front of the KGB headquarters. Dzerzhinsky, known to his comrades in arms under the nickname the Iron Feliks fell on the night of August 22, 1991, after the defeat of the abortive coup against Gorbachev. If in Moscow, the wrath of people quickly toppled the hated idol with the help of a one not too powerful crane, in Kyiv situation was quite different. In 1990 protesters vandalized the Monument to the Great October Revolution – 18-meter-high memorial composed of the gigantic statue of Lenin made of granite and four much smaller bronze statues of representatives of the revolutionary masses. The monument dubbed by Kievites “Gulliver and Lilliputians” was covered by obscene graffiti. It was the only possible way of profanation. The protesters were not able to destroy such a colossus. In contrast to Moscow, Ukrainian officials decided not to leave the initiative to the masses and quietly demolished the Lenin’s shrine a month after the failed coup. The Square of the Great October Revolution was renamed the same year into the Maidan of Independence destined to become the location of all forthcoming Ukrainian revolutions.
in Kyiv situation was quite different. In 1990 protesters vandalized the Monument to the Great October Revolution – 18-meter-high memorial composed of the gigantic statue of Lenin made of granite and four much smaller bronze statues of representatives of the revolutionary masses. The monument dubbed by Kievites “Gulliver and Lilliputians” was covered by obscene graffiti.
The fall of two Soviet idols on the eve of the collapse of the USSR heralded the impending liberation from the oppressive past, but somehow it never arrived. In Russia, the euphoria of rejection of the communist legacy proved to be short-lived. After the declaration of the independence of Ukraine in 1991, the country’s initial approach to toponyms and monuments was not too different from the policy of its Russian neighbor. Despite an outburst of widespread iconoclasm in the western part of the country hundreds of Lenin statues of all possible shapes and materials (from granite to plaster) adorned central squares of Ukrainian cities and villages.
After toying with the idea to organize an equivalent of the Nuremberg trial against the communist party, Yeltsin’s government doomed to struggle with so-called red-brown opposition composed of communists, and rightwing nationalists decided to reverse history not by destruction but by construction. Three years after the fall of the Soviet Union the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ, the Savior detonated in 1931 on the order of Stalin started. Such rebuilding had a symbolic role. The biggest cathedral of the Russian church had to be erected again nullifying the history of the country and manifesting new ideological turn – hope to use religion once rejected and prosecuted in the atheist state as a part of the new ideology of independent Russia. Ukraine swiftly followed the example and started to resurrect not one, but two ecclesiastical buildings destroyed in Kyiv during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1994 president Leonid Kravchuk signed an order to reconstruct the 11th-century Cathedral of Dormition, the main church of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery destroyed in 1941. (There are conflicting accounts of this destruction. According to one of them the cathedral was detonated by the Soviet saboteurs, according to another by the Nazi troops.) The same year the president of Ukraine ordered to start reconstruction works of the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery erased by Bolshevik government in 1934 after the move of the capital of Soviet Ukraine from Kharkiv to Kyiv. In both Moscow and Kyiv, newly restored cathedrals once destroyed by communists were surrounded by the Soviet monuments standing on the squares and streets named after the leaders of the Bolshevist regime. Lukewarm revision of place names often culminated in such toponymic absurdities as, for example, a junction of Yitzhak Rabin Street and the Street of the 25th Chapev Division of the Workers and Peasants Red Army in Odessa (such cases could be multiplied ad infinitum).
However, if the 1990s semantic chaos of old and new (which in reality often was not more than the well-forgotten old) reined in both Russia and Ukraine, the next decade had quite a different agenda. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russians not only tried to politicize history but also to construct a new ideology of the continuous empire from the medieval prince Vladimir to his contemporary namesake.
However, if the 1990s semantic chaos of old and new (which in reality often was not more than the well-forgotten old) reined in both Russia and Ukraine, the next decade had quite a different agenda. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russians not only tried to politicize history but also to construct a new ideology of the continuous empire from the medieval prince Vladimir to his contemporary namesake. Attempts to adopt the history of the USSR for such a model were quite painful. The Bolshevist revolution destroyed Imperial Russia and plunged the country into the bloody civil war. The Soviet campaign against religion and destruction of the Orthodox Church didn’t fit the new narrative. If Lev Trotsky and even Vladimir Lenin, still resting today in his mausoleum on the main square of the Russian capital, were treated as villains – one openly, the second with poorly hidden scorn, Joseph Stalin, who returned to revolutionary Russia the imperial grandeur was provoking more positive emotions. However, even though the neo-imperial ideologists labeled the tyrant as an “able manager,” his manner of management based on mass repressions which costed population of the USSR millions of victims hardly could be openly embraced. Such deficit of the useful past gave rise to the fetishization of only one historic event which could perfectly fit into the new ideological model. It was Soviet victory in WW2 unashamedly nationalized by the Putin’s Russia. Millions of killed soldiers and civilians from other republics of the USSR and their contribution to the victory were disregarded. The role of the allies was in the best case, marginalized. The new political religion of “great victory” was established and instantaneously ritualized. Celebrations of Victory Day turned into a militaristic frenzy, transforming into recompense for the defeat in the Cold War and disintegration of the Soviet Union, which according to Vladimir Putin became “the main geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” The war cult became compensation for the Weimar syndrome of the post-soviet Russia of the 1990s and the ideological prelude to the invasions into Georgia and Ukraine.
If new Russian ideology became the myth about the invincible empire, the construction of the Ukrainian national narrative was focused on the victimhood. To the same extent, the Russians were proud of their victories, the Ukrainians were proud of their defeats. After the Orange Revolution of 2004, the story of Holodomor (the artificial famine of 1932-1933 provoked by Joseph Stalin and recognized in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people) dominated the national historical debate.
Still memorial sites dedicated to the tragic events of the artificial famine were rising nearby of the statues of the Bolshevist leaders and Soviet generals of WW2. Such neighborhood of memorials to victims and perpetrators created the unavoidable feeling of the cognitive dissonance.
Still memorial sites dedicated to the tragic events of the artificial famine were rising nearby of the statues of the Bolshevist leaders and Soviet generals of WW2. Such neighborhood of memorials to victims and perpetrators created the unavoidable feeling of the cognitive dissonance.
This dissonance had to be removed once and forever both by decommunization and the new policy of national memory introduced after the Maidan Revolution.
The foundation stone of such policy became heroization of Ukrainian nationalists including such ambiguous figures as Stepan Bendera or Roman Shukhevich. The Institute of the National Memory of Ukraine tried to construct the heroic myth of the Ukrainian resistance to Polish, Nazi and Bolshevik domination disregarding not only the spotted history of it (accusation in collaboration with the Nazis, participation in Holocaust, ethnic cleansing of Polish population) but also its regional character solely connected to Western Ukraine. An attempt to impose a highly politicized local historical narrative on the whole country proved to be not strikingly effective. What was embraced in the western part of Ukraine was rejected in the east. It seems that the primary beneficiary of the toils of the institute became Russian propaganda for five years screaming daily about Ukrainian fascist and anti-Semites.
Years passed after the Maidan Revolution showed that Ukrainian history couldn’t provide too much of useful past suitable for oversimplified interpretation. The short-lived Ukrainian statehood of the post-revolutionary period proved to be too complicated both from historical and from a political point of view. The leading players were Ukrainian patriots, but at the same time turned out to be too lefty for the contemporary official taste. The powerful Ukrainian anarchist movement which was challenging to accuse in sympathy to the conception of the state as such remained on the margins of the new national historical narrative even though two new monuments honored its leader Nestor Makhno.
The powerful Ukrainian anarchist movement which was challenging to accuse in sympathy to the conception of the state as such remained on the margins of the new national historical narrative even though two new monuments honored its leader Nestor Makhno.
The notions of resistance and tragedy as the primary paradigm of the new national mythology were not limited only to political history.
The discourse of victimhood was also applied to the history of Ukrainian culture. Stalinist repressions against representatives of the national literature and art were more severe and started earlier than in the other republics of the USSR. The martyrology of Ukrainian culture was named the “Executed Renaissance.” The term coined by Jerzy Giedroyc, the well-known Polish writer, became the common denominator for the generation of Ukrainian writers, artists, and theatre directors dominated the cultural scene during the policy of Ukrainization in 1923 – 1931. Such a policy was premeditated in Moscow and adopted in the different Soviet republics under the umbrella term of “indigenization.” The main objective of it was to destroy the last resistance of the remains of the old regime and to gain the support of the population of the national republics by reversing the imperial policy of Russification. Probably the best outline description “indigenization” could be paraphrase of the definition of Socialist realism – “national in character, bolshevist in essence.” The Ukrainian Soviet government implemented “Ukrainization” neck and crop. The process gave birth to the phenomena of the national communism and triggered the development of the modernist revolutionary culture. However, when “indigenization” stopped to be useful and became dangerous, it was oppressed by merciless repressions directed from the Soviet capital.
The contemporary hagiography of the Ukrainian culture of the period is stressing its national character but reservedly mentioning if not entirely omitting its communist essence. The alternative term of “Red Renaissance” is used rarely. The martyrs of the national culture celebrated as conscious Ukrainians, but not as radical revolutionaries.
The parliament adopted the law on decommunization against the background of this highly emotional, but not well-thought through effort to establish weaponized national narrative opposing both Soviet and Russian politicized versions of history. According to the observation of artist Oleksandr Roytburd decommunization was not so much struggle with communist ideology as with Bolshevist legacy. Such legacy was interpreted as the colonial heritage per se (despite broad participation of numerous “latter-day saints” included in the new Ukrainian menology in the deeds (and crimes) of the Bolshevist regime.)
According to the observation of artist Oleksandr Roytburd decommunization was not so much struggle with communist ideology as with Bolshevist legacy. Such legacy was interpreted as the colonial heritage per se (despite broad participation of numerous “latter-day saints” included in the new Ukrainian menology in the deeds (and crimes) of the Bolshevist regime.)
In 2015 Ukrainian Parliament adopted the so-called “memory laws,” heralding the beginning of decommunization. During the next three years, authorities changed names of dozens of cities and villages and more than 50.000 squares and streets. The law provoked the mass dismantling of the soviet monuments nicknamed Leninopad – Leninfall (as snowfall). Nearly 2000 monuments to Lenin fell around the country. (In a sense it is a shame that the officials disregarded some voices demanding creation in Ukraine a park of sculptures of the totalitarian period modeled on the Hungarian example. The open-air museum with two thousand Lenin’s statues obviously could become an international landmark.) However the problem was not too much the leader of the proletarian revolution, but the monuments to the Soviet generals and soldiers commemorating the WWII. Russia appropriated the “great victory” and by the very fact of such appropriation made it problematic for Ukraine. The new historical narrative stressed the fact that Ukrainians found themselves on the both sides on the divide fighting in the ranks of the Red Army against the Nazis and against that very army in the nationalist underground. The new laws created a loophole decreeing demolition of the monuments to the soviet officials and preservation of the memorials to the heroes of the anti-Nazi struggle (who often happened to be the same persons.) Such ambiguity added oil to the fire helping the opposition in the east to struggle against the demolition of the monuments to the “great victory,” understood and interpreted according to the Moscow guidelines.
The new laws created a loophole decreeing demolition of the monuments to the soviet officials and preservation of the memorials to the heroes of the anti-Nazi struggle (who often happened to be the same persons.) Such ambiguity added oil to the fire helping the opposition in the east to struggle against the demolition of the monuments to the “great victory,” understood and interpreted according to the Moscow guidelines.
Another unexpected problem was the decision on the removal of the Soviet emblems equalized with the Nazi symbols. (Numerous post-communist states adopted similar laws before Ukraine.) Heavy-handed execution of the law provoked destructions of numerous mosaics created in1960s – 1980s. Monumental mosaic panels became a specific genre of the official Ukrainian art after the Kruschev’s thaw. Used as decoration of various architectural projects, they played an essential role in the urban space of the country. These mosaics stylistically reflected modernist influences common for the socialist realism of the post-Stalinist period. In the majority of cases, they had propaganda topicality, but it often was not more than the render to Caesar. The best examples of such decorative, colorful compositions were not about content but form. It is not surprising that many Ukrainian non-conformist artists found refuge in the production of the “mosaic propaganda.”
The Ukrainian art circles opposed the official decommunization. Such a rejection was a demonstration of disagreement with the new “national memory” policy. However, the main reason cited continuously by different representatives of the art community was aesthetic – artists loudly expressed their concern that the official iconoclasts could throw out the baby with the bath water. The low artistic quality of the majority of sculptural monuments endlessly produced on the Ford conveyer belt of the Soviet Art Production Corporation didn’t leave too many arguments to defend them. The exception which attracted attention was the equestrian monument to Mykola Shchors, the commander of the Red troops active in 1918 -1919, erected in Kyiv in 1954. His historical importance was more mythological than real. On request of Stalin Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the famous Ukrainian film director, created a film dedicated to Schchors in 1939. Cinematically superb this exercise in the Stalinist hagiography established the myth of the fearless commander of Ukrainian Bolsheviks. In a certain sense, the monument erected in Kyiv was not too much to the historical figure as to the fictional character from the Dovzhenko movie.
The Ukrainian art circles opposed the official decommunization. Such a rejection was a demonstration of disagreement with the new “national memory” policy. However, the main reason cited continuously by different representatives of the art community was aesthetic – artists loudly expressed their concern that the official iconoclasts could throw out the baby with the bath water.
The majority of the art community opposed the demolition of the statue. Some, like Oleksyi Radinsky, stated that “Soviet communism collapsed, but it remains an easy villain to be blamed for every disaster that engulfed Ukraine with the advent of its successor: capitalism.” According to the artist, removal of the monuments after three decades of the post-communist rule can’t solve the problems of the country.
The rejection of the planned demolition by other artists was based on the shaky ground that the monument in question was the only equestrian statue in the Ukrainian capital. Oleksandr Roytburd called to inscribe on the pedestal that the memorial is dedicated not to Shchors as a real figure but to the artistic dream of Oleksandr Dovzhenko.
The resistance to the legalized iconoclasm by contemporary artist combined of the left salon frond and aesthetic consideration was perfectly summarized by Nikita Kadan, who suggested that all communist monuments had to be left in their places forming the open space (and country-wide – K.A.) museum of ideology and propaganda. The only change he proposed were inscriptions on the pedestals of the monuments.
The resistance to the legalized iconoclasm by contemporary artist combined of the left salon frond and aesthetic consideration was perfectly summarized by Nikita Kadan, who suggested that all communist monuments had to be left in their places forming the open space (and country-wide – K.A.) museum of ideology and propaganda. The only change he proposed were inscriptions on the pedestals of the monuments.
Interestingly, the reaction of the Ukrainian contemporary art community to the iconoclasm was quite typical for the Eastern and Central Europe. Krzysztof Wodiczko, the well-known Polish artist, fascinated with the symbols of power, noticed that:
“Watching the monuments to Lenin destroyed made me think that there should be a public discussion before any of this is irreversible. The sculptures are witnesses to the past, memorabilia of the monstrous past.”
Wodiczko believes that “the past must be infused with a present to create a critical history.” Kadan, in a sense echoed his words, when he called for the formation of the new memory policy based on the existence of oppositely directed narratives in one space.
Unfortunately, in Ukraine past was infused by present since the declaration of independence in 1991, but didn’t result in the establishment even of the slightest notion of the critical history. The struggle of the colliding narratives not only exist but turned into a Manichean battle of good and evil (the sides are selected according to the personal believes).
In contrast to their North American counterparts supporting the destruction of the Confederate monuments without any sentiments about their aesthetic or historical value, Ukrainian contemporary artists selected the path of the half-hearted protectors of the past. Their views fermented by the liberal opposition to the rough official policy of memory and the agrestic nationalism of the ultra-right. However, the artists forget the recommendation of Karl Marx, that “humanity should part with its past cheerfully.” What Guy Debord called “the self-portrait of power” had to be removed, the question was not the necessity of such removal, but its tactics.
Ukrainian artists were much more successful in processing decommunization in their artworks than in their statements. Yevhen Nikoforov produced an impressive chronicle of the fallen idols. His photo-series dedicated to the propaganda mosaics neglected and doomed for destruction or images of the demolished monuments fragmented and thrown around the backyards of official buildings deprived of didactic notes. The photographer honestly recorded the historical and political shift. Perhaps the words “Sic transit…” could be adopted as a moto of his series. One of the most impressive images created by Nikiforov is a photograph of the monument to the 1st Peoples and Workers Cavalry Army active during the Civil War. The memorial was erected in 1975 near the village of Olesko in Lviv region. From the historical point of view, the location of the monument was dubious. In 1920 the army, which took part in the Bolshevik war against Poland was bogged down in the area. The slowdown of its advance led to the defeat of the Bolsheviks in the battle of Warsaw. The memorial created by sculptor Valentin Borisenko and architect Anatoliy Konsulov became probably the most innovative monument in Soviet Ukraine. Thank for the usage of the original loadbearing construction two equestrian figures of the Red Cavalrymen were levitating in the air. The photograph of Nikiforov represented the statue practically gnawed round – only a part of the front rider remained attached to the framework. Ironically the monument to the Red cavalry was not demolished as a result of decommunization but was brutalized by the local population looting expensive bronze to sell it at scrapyards. (Unfortunately, the sculpture group situated near Olesko became not the only victim of the “spontaneous decommunization.” Some mosaics and sculpture often deprive of any Soviet symbolism were destroyed by different commercial entities eager to free space for their projects using decommunization as a cover of continence.)
Yevgen Nikiforov. On Republic’s Monuments. Color photography, 2014-2018
Nikita Kadan dedicated few projects to the critical interpretation (or, to be precise, the absence of it) of the predominant narrative of so-called Ukrainian avant-garde. The critique of the artist directed against the one-sided history of Ukrainian art and hagiography of the national modernism sounds so far as a cry in the desert. Ukrainian art historians are too busy with myth-making and discussions was Kazimir Malevich a true Ukrainian artist to start so needed revision of the sugar-sweet tales presented as a narrative of the national art.
In 2016, Nikiya Kadan implemented a project called “Repetition of Forgiveness,” which, according to the artist, was concerned “with contemporary politics of memory in Ukraine.” Kadan created monumental photomontage, placing images of the Orthodox stylites borrowed from the 14th-century frescoes on the pedestals of the demolished monuments to Lenin.
Nikita Kadan. Stylites (Take the Place). Paper, print, 2015. Photo from the exposition at Ya Gallery. Photo by V.Denisenkov
The artist unwillingly not only made an ironic statement but pointed to the severe danger. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, the famous Polish satirist, wrote, “When smashing monuments, save the pedestals – they always come in handy.” The recent events in Ukraine are putting under the question irreversibility of the policy of decommunization, which just yesterday looked like the final if not too elegant farewell to the Soviet past. The pedestals are empty indeed. What will be erected on them is a question of the future of the country. As we recently learned, the struggle of the colliding narratives is not finished yet.