Construction of the Lenin monument was intended to begin as early as 1940 - this is attested by a marble plate with a corresponding inscription. In the years of the German occupation of the city, this stella was destroyed, and a cubic memorial with a chalice, an eternal flame, and an inscription marking the Adolph-Hitler-Ring (as the present-day Svobody Blvd. was then known). In 1945, after the conclusion of the war, the Council of People's Commisars of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine adopted a resolution to erect a monument to the Leader of the World Proletariat, V. I. Lenin. The laying of the first stone of the monument took place on April 22, 1945 in the square in front of the Opera and Ballet Theater. Several possible sites for the monument had been considered - Bernardynska (now Soborna) Sq., and the summit of the Castle Hill. Because the process of agreeing on a contractor was drawn out, and the funding for the erection of the monument was scarce, the monument was finally unveiled on January 20, 1952, instead of the original intended unveiling date of 1948.