A victory for common sense

Our readers remember that in the article “Historical memory and new ‘weapons’” that summarized The Day’s roundtable, Doctor of History Yurii Shapoval told that members of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine addressed the Kuras Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies with a request to evaluate the construction of the monument to Pyotr Stolypin, who was the prime minister during 1906-11. According to Shapoval, this request was supplemented by an appeal from a group of MPs, including Eduard Prutnyk, and members of a few pro-Russian and Cossack NGOs.

The Day learned that scientists at the Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies gave a clearly negative opinion about this initiative, and thoroughly substantiated their position.

“Stolypin is far from being a figure that is connected to Ukraine in a positive sense. His political activity is related to rather unpleasant pages in our history. Let us just recall the infamous Stolypin’s neckties: gallows and numerous repressive actions against Ukrainians carried out by his government. Stolypin always treated Ukrainians as foreigners inferior to Russians. And by the way, he never even tried to conceal this attitude,” Shapoval commented upon the Institute’s resolution. “And finally, the only detail that connects him to Kyiv is that he was mortally wounded at the Kyiv Opera House. It is absurd to install a monument to him just because of this. Moreover, Stolypin considered Ukrainian national movement to be hostile and he treated it accordingly. We need to keep these things in mind and have some self-respect!”

By the way, scientists at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences submitted a similar rigidly negative assessment on the project of Pyotr Stolypin monument installation in Kyiv. In the conversation with The Day, deputy director of the Institute, Doctor of History, professor Hennadii Boriak confirmed that their academic institution also “gave a definitely negative response to this initiative.”