The "Historical Path" (1909–1911)

In 1911 the Russian Empire erected a monument to princess Olha in Kyiv - on a site the city had allotted two years earlier for a monument to Shevchenko. In May 1909, the Kyiv city duma allotted the square on Mykhailivska Square for a monument to Taras Shevchenko^[1]. Zilov, the trustee of the Kyiv educational district, wrote confidentially to governor-general Trepov that Shevchenko should not be placed opposite a "Russian governmental institution" and that "it would be necessary to erect a monument to one of the figures of Russian history"^[1]. Out of this letter grew the program of the "historical path": on 7 April 1910, colonel Steletsky, secretary of the Kyiv section of the Imperial Russian Military-Historical Society, submitted a memorandum with a queue of eight monuments - princess Olha, Oleh, Yaroslav, Volodymyr, Volodymyr Monomakh, Sviatoslav, "prehistoric Kyiv" and Nestor the chronicler^[1]. On 15 March 1911, the duma, with 68 of 72 councilors present, gave the society the site between St. Sophia Cathedral and St. Michael's Monastery - 46 votes against 22 - and at the same session overturned its own decision of 1909, moving the site of the future Shevchenko monument to the Karavaivska intersection: 41 against 24^[1]. At first the duma rejected the concrete design as insufficiently "artistically monumental," and a month later permitted only a temporary model to be put up^[1] - that is, they agreed to place a makeshift on the seized site, so long as it was occupied. The monument was unveiled on 4 September 1911: princess Olha in the center, to the left the apostle Andrew pointing at the Kyiv hills, to the right the seated Cyril and Methodius^[2][3]. The model was sculpted by Ivan Kavaleridze and Petro Snitkin, the architect was Valerian Rykov, and the project was led by the sculptor Fedir Balavensky^[4]; the historian Ihor Hyrych notes the paradox - the author of the imperial monument turned out to be "one of the 'Ukrainomaniacs' - a future outstanding sculptor and film director, and then a beginning artist, Ivan Kavaleridze"^[5]. Cast on the pedestal was: "A Gift of the Sovereign Emperor to the City of Kyiv. In the Year of Our Lord 1911" - the tsar's cabinet did indeed give ten thousand rubles for the monument, and the Kyiv merchant Mohylevsky contributed another thousand^[2][1]. Below, on the pedestal of the princess herself, stood: "She was the first from Rus to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; her the sons of Rus praise as their initiator"^[2] - the baptism of Rus was being written into the imperial genealogy right on the stone. In 1919 the statue was thrown off its pedestal and buried, split in two, beneath the monument itself; in March 1923 the remaining figures were removed, and in March 1926 the communal department of Kyiv ordered the concrete cleared away for good^[2][1]. In 1996 the statue was dug out from under the flowerbed and the monument was recreated from the old sketches, this time in marble^[4].