Territorial Marking with Imperial Symbols

On 11 July 1888 the Russian Empire unveiled the Bohdan Khmelnytsky monument on Sophia Square in Kyiv - a sign of "unity" with Moscow: on the left side of the pedestal stood the dates "1654-1888," counting the city's history from the Pereiaslav Rada^[1]. The committee for its construction was headed by Mikhail Yuzefovich^[1] - an official of the Kyiv educational district and author of the memorandum that formed the basis of the Ems ukase of 1876^[2]. The conference convened over that memorandum, sitting with Yuzefovich's participation, resolved "not to permit the import into the empire, without special authorization of the Main Administration for Press Affairs, of any books or brochures whatsoever published abroad in the Little Russian dialect," and "to forbid the printing and publishing in the empire of original works and translations in that dialect, with the sole exceptions of: a) historical documents and monuments and b) works of belles-lettres" - the latter permitted only in Russian orthography and from a manuscript reviewed by the censorship^[3]. Under the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR of 7 May 1919 on removing from squares and streets the monuments put up to tsars and tsarist minions, two of the three inscriptions were knocked off the pedestal; the remaining one was ordered removed by Hrynko, chairman of the Kyiv gubernia executive committee - academician Yefremov recorded this in his diary on 6 February 1925 - and in the end the side plaques were replaced with blank ones, while "Bohdan Khmelnytskyi 1888" was carved on the front stone^[1].