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Taras Schewtschenko Monument

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The statue of the Romanian soldier erected on the site of the Marian column was replaced in 1951 by a Lenin monument by M. Vronsky and O. Olijnyk (removed in 1992), which in turn was replaced in 1991 by a statue of Taras Shevchenko (Ševčenko) by Petro Lemskij and Mykola Lysakiwskij, which now dominates the central square. The dates on the monument refer to the period since the first documentary mention of Chernivtsi. Shevchenko's importance is felt throughout Ukraine; there are now said to be over 2,000 monuments to him, and the one in Chernivtsi is a striking fusion of the Habsburg tradition with the imperial motto Viribus Unitis.

Monuments

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1998 - 1999

Viribus Unitis, with united forces, was the motto of Francis Joseph I's state policy and today adorns the left wing of the Shevchenko monument. Other monuments erected after 1991 as part of Ukrainianisation, but also regionalisation, were for the poet and composer Sydir Vorobkovych (1992), for Osip Jurij Fedkowytsch (1995, monument), for Ivan Franko and for the first Metropolitan of Bukovina, Eugen Hackmann (2006).

In 1945, an obelisk commemorating the liberation of Chernivtsi from the German-Romanian occupiers was erected on the site of the demolished Unirea monument in what was now “Red Square”. Other monuments erected as part of the Sovietisation process included a monument to the Victory of the Soviet Union, a monument to the Heroes of the Soviet Union and a monument to the Heroes of the Red Army (all 1946), and a monument to Kalinin (1956), which replaced the 1897 Tomaszczuk monument to the founder of the University of Chernivtsi.

Text: Steffen Höhne