Cossack Mamai Was Guarded F rom Children

October 14 saw the unveiling of Valentyn Znoba’s monument to Cossack Mamai in Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] next to the Conservatory. From olden times Mamai was considered a personification of the Ukrainian character, a model of the freedom-loving nature, steadfastness, and immortality of our people. The ceremony was timed to the festival of the Protection of the Virgin, patroness of the Cossacks.

The sculpture depicts the Cossack sitting on a rock, his saber ready at hand, holding his bandura, with his horse, a symbol of freedom, prancing beside him. Such an image was inherent to Mamai from time immemorial, becoming widespread in the fine arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Folk artists portrayed Mamai not on horseback but in a peaceful meditative pose: the Cossack sits calmly under a tree with his legs crossed. He was above all a man of peace (unless anybody bothered him, of course). Warding off attacks, he cherished a primeval dream of building and creating instead of battling, capturing, and enslaving. Cossack Mamai is an itinerant Zaporozhzhian, fighter and scapegrace, joker and philosopher, bandura player and singer. He had always been an embodiment of the best traits of Ukrainian national character. Now Kyivans have a chance to observe this image in bronze every day in Independence Square. Perhaps children like the monument most of all: on Sunday they explored it with great curiosity, trampling down the lawn. And then, to their tremendous disappointment, a militia detail was posted to the hapless silent minstrel.