“Cleanup in progress”

On January 13, on the instructions of Kherson’s Mayor Volodymyr Mykolaienko, workers of the Garantia public utilities enterprise removed Lenin’s bas-relief and the inscription “Iskra” from a stele in Gymnasium Garden. The workers used blue paint to obliterate the historical reference about establishing a memorial in honor of the communist propaganda mouthpiece.

The dismantling was an expected, albeit a little hasty, action. The point is that the Kherson Self-Defense and the local Right Sector branch had announced in social websites about a campaign to put Soviet-era monuments “into a proper condition.” RS people wrote: “We invite all patriots to assemble by the Iskra monument on Wednesday, January 14, 2015, at 4 p.m. Make your contribution to history. Please, bring over all that can help the nationalists (sledgehammers, crowbars, etc.) The Kherson mayor has also been invited.” To ward off an uncontrolled ruination and likely clashes in the downtown, the city authorities decided to dismantle the monument by themselves.

“I support this decision. Activists drew the attention of the authorities to this, and the latter promptly responded to this,” Kherson Self-Defense chief Denys Loshkariov says. “But still we will gather at that place tomorrow to install our state symbols and express our opinion that no totalitarian regime symbols should remain in our city. We will continue to work to clean Kherson of communist memorabilia. If the authorities do this on their own, it will be a good thing, but if our help is needed, we are ready.”