• The monument to Stolypin in Kyiv in front of the Semadeni café 2

The monument to Stolypin in Kyiv in front of the Semadeni café

Images

ID:
5127
Place
Kyiv
Date:
1913-1917
Technique:
Photograph (printed on paper)
Size of the resource:
Unknown
Creator
Unknown
Collection
H.S. Pshenychnyi Central State Cinema, Photo and Phono Archive of Ukraine
Copyright
Central State Kinofotofono Archive after G.S. Pshenychny
Publisher
Unpublished resources
Description

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.

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.

Olga Martyniuk

Tags:
monument, square, transport
Category:
Public space
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