<p><br />

The monument to Stolypin in Kyiv in<br />

front of the Semadeni<br />

café. The monument<br />

was built on the initiative of Russian nationalists in 1913, two<br />

years later after Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin, the Prime Minister of<br />

the Russian Empire, was assassinated in the Kyiv opera house. In 1917<br />

the monument was dismantled, the statue of Stolypin being “hanged”<br />

on a specially constructed scuffold: it was a symbolical revenge for<br />

the persecution and execution of revolutionaries in 1906-1907. It was<br />

not by chance that the Russian nationalists’ club and their<br />

deputies in the City Duma chose this place. The Semadeni<br />

café was situated<br />

close to the Kyiv exchange and enjoyed the status of an “informal<br />

exchange” where a lot of Jewish commersants used to gather. For<br />

Russian nationalists, who struggled for Russian commerce to<br />

counterbalance Jewish commercial capital, this choice meant a<br />

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

Behind the monument, the building of the Kyiv City Duma is situated<br />

(it is not seen in the picture), so the monument to Stolypin is also<br />

present near the main municipal institution. There is also a statue<br />

of an epic strong man on the pedestal; above, one can see a<br />

well-known quotation by Stolypin: “You need great perturbations, we<br />

need a Great Russia.” The photo depicts also the dynamic traffic on<br />

Khreshchatyk (a cart, a carriage, a tram, and a car) and a distinct<br />

division of the street space into a transport zone and a pedestrian<br />

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