Ukraine has replaced the Soviet emblem that was part of one of the nation’s most recognizable monuments with the country’s coat of arms.
The Mother Ukraine monument, a 62-metre tall (200ft) steel statue of a female warrior, was built in 1981 on top of a hill on the right bank of the Dnipro River.
The statue holds a sword in her right hand and a shield in her left. Originally, the shield bore the Soviet Union’s coat of arms; a crossed hammer and sickle surrounded by ears of wheat.
However, on Sunday, August 6, 2023, the Soviet Union’s coat of arms was replaced with the Ukrainian tryzub, the three-pronged trident that was officially adopted as the coat of arms for independent Ukraine on February 19, 1992.
In late July, workers removed parts of the coat of arms. However, adverse weather and ongoing air raids delayed the work.
Ukraine’s ministry of culture disclosed that the new trident symbol has been made from Ukrainian steel and with its £600,000 cost paid by private business.
The gesture symbolizes a wider shift throughout Ukraine to reclaim the country’s cultural identity from the Soviet past amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
That cultural shift to a stronger Ukrainian self-identity was accompanied in recent years by a political tilt to the west that incensed Vladimir Putin and was part of his justification for invading.
The revamp also coincides with a new name for the statue, which was previously known under its Soviet-era name of the “Motherland monument.”
Ukraine outlawed Soviet symbols in 2015, the year after Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatist proxies in the country’s east but it did not include World War II monuments such as the Mother Ukraine statue.
Across Ukraine, hundreds of statues of Russian poets and Soviet generals were torn down or defaced, and public art and propaganda murals were covered up or removed.
Thousands of streets and dozens of towns and villages were renamed. Streets and squares previously named after Soviet party leaders or generals were given names associated with national history, prominent Ukrainians or friends of the Ukrainian people such as the late US senator John McCain.
Monument To Be Unveiled On Ukrainian Independence Day
The completed sculpture is slated to be officially unveiled on August 24, 2023; Ukrainian Independence Day.
According to data from the country’s Culture Ministry released last year, about 85 percent of Ukrainians were in support of the removal of the hammer and sickle from the landmark.
For many in Ukraine, the Soviet past is synonymous with Russian imperialism, the oppression of the Ukrainian language, and the Holodomor; a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians and has been recognized as an act of genocide by both the European Parliament and the United States.
In a statement marking the emblem’s removal on their website, Ukraine’s national World War II museum, described the Soviet coat of arms as a symbol of a totalitarian regime that “destroyed millions of people.”
“Together with the coat of arms, we’ve disposed the markers of our belonging to the ‘post-Soviet space’. We are not ‘post-’, but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s action did not sit well with Russia, which criticised the changes to the statue.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry Spokeswoman, said, “Mother cannot be renamed. She is unique and the only thing you can do with her is love her.”
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