Nils Ackermann traveled all over Ukraine to photograph the remains of monuments defeated in the process of uprisings. In his opinion, the statues of Lenin are symbols of not only the former USSR, but also of the current Russian intervention. Interview with the photographer was taken by journalist Liberation Veronica Dorman.
"We were overwhelmed by the fact that every Ukrainian has something to say about Lenin," the photographer emphasized.. - Every inhabitant of ex-USSR had his own opinion. In the testimony of everyone we met - it was politicians, guards, grandmothers - had their own truth. They did not always talk about Lenin, more often about the era, about the actions of the Communists, about the sense of having such a monument in his area. And each such statement contradicted the previous. Hence the complete vagueness of judgments. Ultimately, you no longer know what to think about decommunization and about Lenin ".
"It started much earlier than 2014. Even before the fall of the USSR, one monument to Lenin was dismantled in the west of Ukraine. Then the first wave of demolition began after the proclamation of independence. Over the past 45 years, half of the 5,500. Monuments was dismantled. Then nothing happened, before the "Leninopad", which began on December 8, 2013 in Kiev. When the statue was defeated in the center of the capital at the beginning of the revolution, people were embittered, they trampled the monument with their feet with incredible ferocity, as if it were a question of the Berlin Wall. It was anger not against a specific person, but against all that this monument personified: the Soviet past, the modern policy of Putin, the source of the newspaper is sure. - Finally, the third phase has come - the official decommunization. Laws were adopted, and attacks were launched not only on monuments, but on all communist symbols - names of cities and streets, monuments to other leaders ".
"On the map of monuments to Lenin in Ukraine, which can be found in Google, almost no zones controlled by Kiev: they are covered only by the occupied Donbass and Crimea. Someone tried to blow up a monument in the center of Donetsk, but there it was equated with a terrorist act. For me, one of the most touching testimonies of this project, which served as an excuse for the correctness of our approach, was the story of a young man from Kharkov that "he felt like a man that evening when he overthrew Lenin," said Ackermann. "However, he explained that the goal was not Lenin or communism. In cities in the east of Ukraine, at the foot of the monument to Lenin were appointed assemblies of separatists. His demolition for the inhabitants of Kharkov became a matter of war or peace.
Like destroying the meeting place, you can tear out the roots of evil. In the end, these monuments everywhere began to play a role that goes far beyond their original symbolism; Lenin began to represent not so much a communist legacy as Russian intervention ".
"After the Maidan, when the statues were plundered and either painted in national colors of Ukraine, or covered with inscriptions of anti-Putin content, monuments to Lenin began to be considered quasi-memories to Putin," said Akermann.