The last monument to Pushkin was demolished in Poltava Oblast

The latest monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in the city of Lubny, Poltava region, on August 19.

The dismantling was carried out by the municipal services of the community in accordance with the decision of the city council regarding the removal/relocation of the memorial object - the monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin from the public space of Lubny.

According to the document, the Pushkin monument symbolizes imperial Russian historical narratives. The secretary of the Lubny city council, Margarita Komarova, stated that the municipal housing and communal services of the Lubny city council were responsible for the removal of this object. "The municipal workers relocated the Russian imperial marker from the public space of Lubny to temporary storage on the territory of the local municipal housing and utilities management," she said.

"The 'de-Pushkinization' of Poltava region is being completed. This is the last structure glorifying Pushkin in the Poltava region; similar monuments were dismantled in Kremenchuk, the village of Bilenchenkivka in the Hadyach community, and in the regional center last year and this year. Ahead is the renaming of Pushkin Street in Poltava and in 17 other communities of the region. Until recently, there were 120 toponymy objects related to Pushkin in Poltava region, but most of them were renamed after the full-scale invasion of Pushkin-loving Russians. During the Soviet era, communist and imperialist ideologists audaciously branded Lubny as a 'Pushkin city.' This happened because Anna Kern, a Russian noblewoman who was one of Pushkin's many lovers, spent her childhood and youth in Lubny. Despite a poem-dedication to Anna Kern, Pushkin only mentioned her in the second part of his 'Don Juan List,' and in his letters, he ironically and contemptuously referred to her as the 'Babylonian harlot'... However, far more important knowledge lies beyond love lyrics. The ideology of Russian imperial chauvinism permeates Pushkin's works. In the poem 'Poltava,' he had a disdainful, even hostile attitude towards the prominent Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa. He celebrated the suppression of the liberation aspirations of the Polish people in the poem 'Borodino Anniversary,' dedicated to Russia's seizure of Warsaw and the anniversary of the battle of Borodino. He participated in Russia's wars against the peoples of the Caucasus. These facts, based on correspondence between the poet and Russian military figures Yermolov and Paskevich, were investigated by Professor Eva Thompson, a Polish-American literary scholar, in her famous book 'Empire's Troubadours.' Pushkin glorified the imperialist Caucasian War of 1812 and the Russian general Pyotr Kolyarievsky, who led the Russian forces during the conquest. And the poem 'To the Slanderers of Russia' is used by Putin-Shoigu's army to justify the war against Ukraine," said Oleg Pustovgar, representative of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance in the Poltava region.