<p>

The monument to Stolypin in Kyiv in

front of the Semadeni

café. The monument

was built on the initiative of Russian nationalists in 1913, two

years later after Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin, the Prime Minister of

the Russian Empire, was assassinated in the Kyiv opera house. In 1917

the monument was dismantled, the statue of Stolypin being “hanged”

on a specially constructed scuffold: it was a symbolical revenge for

the persecution and execution of revolutionaries in 1906-1907. It was

not by chance that the Russian nationalists’ club and their

deputies in the City Duma chose this place. The Semadeni

café was situated

close to the Kyiv exchange and enjoyed the status of an “informal

exchange” where a lot of Jewish commersants used to gather. For

Russian nationalists, who struggled for Russian commerce to

counterbalance Jewish commercial capital, this choice meant a

symbolic presence of Russian nationalism in commerce and trade.</p><p>Khreshchatyk street was the commercial capitalist center of the city.

Behind the monument, the building of the Kyiv City Duma is situated

(it is not seen in the picture), so the monument to Stolypin is also

present near the main municipal institution. There is also a statue

of an epic strong man on the pedestal; above, one can see a

well-known quotation by Stolypin: “You need great perturbations, we

need a Great Russia.” The photo depicts also the dynamic traffic on

Khreshchatyk (a cart, a carriage, a tram, and a car) and a distinct

division of the street space into a transport zone and a pedestrian

zone.</p><p><i>Olga Martyniuk</i></p>