Kyiv City Administration confirmed last week that they plan to carry out extensive renovation works on Kyiv’s central Independence Square starting in January 2008. The works will see a new glass plinth for the statue of Kyiv’s patron Archangel Mykhail introduced to the ensemble of items cluttering today’s square and will also see the roofs of buildings surrounding the square painted a uniform terracotta colour. Meanwhile, the electronic clock on the Trade Union building, long a Kyiv icon in its own right, will be replaced by a more traditional clock face that will play patriotic hymns such as the national anthem at half-hourly intervals.
Mirroring a troubled transition
This would be the latest in a series of make-overs which Kyiv’s main square has experienced in the past sixteen years. Its gradual transformation from Soviet-era October Revolution Square to the jumbled homage to Ukrainian independence and consumerism that it represents today has been a metaphor for the identity crisis the country has gone through since the collapse of the USSR.
In the immediate aftermath of the failed Moscow putsch of August 1991 Ukraine’s Soviet-era parliament declared full independence, and Kyiv’s giant statue of Lenin was quickly dismantled and removed from the central square.
The plinth on which this colossal monument stood was to remain empty for years as Ukraine struggled to come to terms with its past and reach agreement on symbols that represented the country’s new identity.
Throughout the late 1990s Independence Square was dominated by a giant TV screen that broadcast a mixture of ultimate fight contests and fashion TV catwalk shows, brilliantly, (although, admittedly, totally unintentionally) capturing the vulgarity, violence and often grotesque glamour of the post-independence decade.
The great remont of 2001
The ambiguities of Independence Square came under the spotlight in the run-up to the August 2001 celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary of independence and in the winter of 2000, barriers went up as the square was closed off for the biggest reconstruction works since the square was rebuilt after the Second World War.
The result was the basic plan which we are all familiar with today, with the various pyramids and backdrops of the Globus shopping centre adding a touch of brand recognition and mercenary mercantilism to the faux patriotic ensemble of Cossack statues and triumphal columns.
The reworked Independence Square design, which was supposed to be the centre piece of the new Ukrainian state’s attractions, was widely criticised at the time for a lack of homogeneity.
This was said to be the result of the fact that a number of different architects had participated in the final design independently of one other, which led to humourists remarking on perceived similarities with Ukrainian government policy, which itself often seemed contradictory and uncoordinated.
Even after these massive reconstruction works Ukraine’s Independence Square remained a paradox, due to the continued existence of a five-metre Soviet-era hammer and sickle symbol which adorned the Trade Union building dominating one side of the square. This relic of the former USSR was the source of much satire until it was finally removed in 2003 ahead of the annual Independence Day celebrations.
Square learns to be independent
The square finally came of age in November 2004, when it served as the focal point for the mass popular protests against the government’s attempts to rig the presidential election.
These demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands of people from across the country onto Kyiv’s central square and captured the imagination of a global audience hooked to coverage of the unfolding Orange Revolution.
The events of 2004 served to overshadow the uncertainty of the early independence years and make Independence Square synonymous with people power and human rights, tranforming the site from object of ridicule to iconic venue.
Today everyone in the former USSR, and also a great many beyond, know Kyiv’s Independence Square simply as Maidan, the Ukrainian word for town square. While Kyiv residents themselves may continue to overwhelmingly favour the Russian language in their day-to-day lives, nobody has referred to Independence Square by its Russian name for many years now. Maidan Nezolezhnosti, to give it its full title, has become one of the few Ukrainian language terms that has passed into common usage without the slightest hint of political correctness.
