Residents in Provincial Southern Ukraine Defend Statue of Vladmir Ilyich Lenin

At Der Spiegel, "Saving Lenin: Soviet-Era Statue a Symbol of Divided Ukraine":

Far away from the protests in major urban centers, the conflict in Ukraine is now reaching all corners of the land. The dispute over a local Lenin statue underscores the country's deep divide.

The revolution reached the Ukrainian city of Illichivsk in the form of a rumor. Three buses, it was said, were on their way to the city from the western part of the country, bearing men carrying weapons who were coming to destroy the city's golden Lenin statue.

The statue in question stands around seven meters (23 feet) high atop a plinth of black granite. It's made of cast bronze and painted a reddish gold. Against a background of Soviet-era apartment blocks, Lenin is a seven-meter dwarf, striding long-legged through the world. The statue's facial expression, though, seems to suggest he knows where things are headed.

Kristina Fabrika has passed by this statue all through her 21 years. Her mother carried her past it on walks when she was a baby. Fabrika played tag here as a young girl. And she still stops by when she goes into town for the evening.

But on this particular evening in early March, while men in uniform occupy the Crimean parliament building and fly a Russian flag, Fabrika is pacing up and down in front of the Lenin statue in leather pants, a leather jacket and black knee-high combat boots. "This is our city," she says.

A City Removed from Bloodshed

Illichivsk is a small city in the far south of Ukraine. The mayor says Illichivsk, population 60,000, was named after the prophet Elijah. People on the street say the name comes from Lenin's middle name, Ilyich. In any case, the statue in honor of the man stands on a road likewise named Lenin Street, at one end of a boulevard lined with plane trees. Between the city's apartment blocks, the golden Lenin shines like a small sun.

Illichivsk is far removed from the bloodshed of the Maidan protest movement. The majority of people in the country aren't out throwing Molotov cocktails. Most are people like Fabrika, normal people, and these are the ones who matter now. They must find a sense of civic solidarity that can unite the south, north, east and west of this country. They must raise up a nation out of the ruins.

News of the threat to Illichivsk's Lenin statue reached Fabrika at the school where she teaches adults to create websites. Her mother called and said, "Do you know what's happening in town?" Fabrika drove to the statue as soon as the lesson was over.

Fabrika describes herself as apolitical, yet these days she talks about politics day and night. She understands that history is happening in her country, and she wants to be a part of it.

When she reached the Lenin statue that day, Fabrika found that hundreds of people, some carrying clubs, had already gathered there. Like her, they had come to protect their Lenin.

They filled an oil barrel with firewood and set up tents to shield themselves from the freezing rain. Most people went home again when the enemy failed to materialize, but a few toughed it out and continued to stand guard.

Business as Usual

Until this rumor started, the protest movement was something far removed from life here. Lviv was celebrating freedom, Kiev was burning, the Russians were descending on Crimea, but in Illichivsk, located on a quiet stretch of the Black Sea coast near Odessa, nothing was burning and no one was celebrating. The city simply went about business as usual, life as it had been under deposed President Viktor Yanukovych and, before that, under the Soviets as well. People here believed they were safe from the sort of chaos that topples governments, kills people and destroys monuments.

Since the occupation of Maidan Square in Kiev began in the fall, Lenin statues have been toppling all around Ukraine. The Communist Party erected these statues in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, while Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. They were meant to serve as a symbol of Moscow's power. Now, they've become a symbol of revolution in a different way entirely.

In Kiev, demonstrators pulled one Lenin statue to the ground using a steel cable. In Andriyevo-Ivanivka they broke a statue into pieces. In Khmelnitsky, they tore a Lenin statue down, then danced on it. In Kotovsk, they tore its head off.

In front of Kristina Fabrika's Lenin, flames flicker in the oil barrel. The statue here is still standing, and its protectors have speared thick pieces of bacon on sticks and are roasting them over the fire. "For vitamin C," one woman says, humorously.

The woman speaks Russian, like nearly everyone in Illichivsk. Fabrika does speak Ukrainian, but she learned it as a foreign language. One of her grandmothers was born in a town near Moscow.

Fabrika says she didn't really pay any attention to the protests in Kiev at first. It wasn't until the police attacked the protesters on Maidan Square, she says, that she knew there would be war.

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