Ukraine tore down its Lenin statues. The hard part is filling the spaces left behind.

Washington Post ^ | Nov 16, 2018 | Anton Troianovski

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Four angels and the Virgin Mary mark the spot where the Communist used to stand.

“We used to get drunk next to the Lenin,” a 45-year-old mechanic named Volodymyr said as he passed by.

“Now it’s a sin to drink there, I guess,” his friend Yulia said.

Five years after the start of Ukraine’s pro-Western revolution, the once-ubiquitous figure of Vladimir Lenin has been eradicated by law. So have other symbols of the Soviet era — gone from the country’s squares, streets and buildings.

But Ukrainians are still searching for meaning — and identity — in the spaces left behind.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance...says all known Lenin statues on Ukrainian government-controlled territory have now been dismantled — more than 1,300 since the decommunization laws were passed in 2015. One exception: monuments near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

What remains, he acknowledges, are hundreds of empty spaces and pedestals, often in towns’ central squares. In the institute’s internal jargon, the vacancies are known as “stumps.”

“The fact is, the question of how to fill these spaces will remain the subject of discussion among Ukrainians for some time,” Viatrovych said. “Our views of our history are still being formed.”

Ukraine’s search for new symbols to replace its Lenins reflects the country’s larger struggle to reorient itself toward the West amid economic turbulence and the continuing war with Russian-backed separatists in the east.

[NFHale]

Yup.

New York just put one in Congress.

[elbook]

Hold contests the winner to be on display for a years time

there are many artists across the whole country and it can be a symbol of the freedom the communists would not allow

[SunkenCiv]

An appropriate use of the space would be public toilets.

• Russia's Third-Largest City to Pay Tribute to Stalin With New Statue [Novosibirsk]

  ...Stalin, who is responsible for the deaths and suffering of millions of Soviet citizens during his rule from 1924 until his death in 1953. Polls show Russians view him as a "remarkable" figure and the younger population is unaware of Stalin-era purges, while President Vladimir Putin has dismissed attacks on Stalin as a ploy to demonize Russia.