Despised Ukrainians and their culture, hated the Ukrainian aspiration for independence.
The Kyiv City Council has decided to dismantle 15 monuments and objects associated with the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Among them is the monument to writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov on Andriyivskyy Descent, reports "Ukrainian Truth".
The memorials to Mikhail Glinka and Anna Akhmatova, the symbolic sign "Kyiv – Hero City" with a five-pointed star, a commemorative stone for the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin, a memorial plaque to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and other objects will also be dismantled or altered.
The bronze monument to Bulgakov was installed on Andriyivskyy Descent in 2007 next to the writer's museum – the Turbin House.
In spring 2024, experts from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory recognized Bulgakov as a "Ukrainophobe" and "an imperialist by worldview," stating that he "despised Ukrainians and their culture, hated the Ukrainian aspiration for independence." Following this, the Kyiv City Council began to consider a petition to exclude mentions of Bulgakov from the public space.
The writer's museum called the institute's conclusions exaggerated and manipulative. The head of the institute, Anton Drobovych, later acknowledged the experts as "a bit emotional," but according to him, "they called things by their names."
Ukraine, like several other post-Soviet republics, after leaving the USSR, has taken a course towards "de-Sovietization and de-Russification" – a rejection of the Soviet legacy and the Russian cultural component and a revival of national language and culture. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and especially after the full-scale invasion of Russian troops in 2022, this process has become noticeably more intense. Hundreds of monuments honoring figures of Russian and Soviet history and culture have been demolished in the country. In particular, in Odesa, sculptures of the founders of the city, Russian Empress Catherine II and General Alexander Suvorov, were dismantled, and in Kharkiv, a bust of poet Alexander Pushkin.
In April 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law prohibiting the naming of geographical objects after names associated with Russia.
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