INDEPENDENCE: A Girl Holding Guelder Rose?

The project of a monument to Ukrainian Independence was presented by the Kyiv City State Administration. The Glory to Ukraine project was voted the best of all represented at the express-contest. Sculptor Anatoly Kulish and a group of architects including Ruslan Kukharenko, Illia Melnykov, and Yuri Tyzh, worked on this project. The competition was announced this August by the Kyiv Mayor’s decree, and its conduct was entrusted to the Kyiv Administration for the Historic Preservation of History, Culture Monuments, and the Historical Environment together with the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and the Arts.

This monumental work will be erected at the Ukraine’s central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosty (Independence Square) in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Ukrainian Independence. The semicircular monument will enclose Maidan’s elliptic form from the Moscow Hotel side that is planned to be renamed Ukraine and reconstructed. At the State-Builders Gallery’s colonnade twelve three meter high monuments to the outstanding figures of Ukraine- Rus’, the Cossack fraternity, and Ukrainian National Republic will be placed. The central column will rise at a height of thirty-eight meters the symbol of Ukraine, a six meter high figure of a girl holding guelder rose ( chervona kalyna , a Ukrainian national symbol) branch. The composition also includes the emblems of all Ukrainian oblasts and soil from each oblast as a place for laying flowers during solemn events. The design stipulates a concert ground, an observation platform on the colonnade where all comers will be able to get with the help of escalator. An idea also came into existence to create an Independence Museum that is supposed to be between the monument and the hotel. The museum will be partially extended underground, that is, it will consist of the below and above ground parts.