In formulating this question, we're not referring to the Lenin monument on Bessarabka Street: we're talking about genuine cultural heritage sites, dozens of which are disappearing in Kyiv recently (!). But no one cares.
Where are they disappearing to, and why aren't the city's Department for Cultural Heritage Protection and the active public not noticing this? This is a question worth answering. This is especially true given the fact that this very Department proved extremely uninterested in first developing and then approving the Kyiv Historical and Architectural Framework Plan. In fact, this historical and architectural framework plan is currently the subject of a lively debate. People are debating whether Kyiv needs such a plan (while the law clearly states it does). Recently, the debate has become even more heated, and the talk has even begun to take on a threatening tone: there are proposals to revoke the Ministry of Culture's order that established the boundaries of Kyiv's historical areas and monument protection zones.
If you ask the crucial question, "Who needs this?" the answer is obvious: such documents, once approved, greatly hinder Kyiv developers working in the city's historic center. They are willing (and are paying!) exorbitant prices to lift any construction restrictions there.
It's telling that the so-called critics of Kyiv's Historical and Architectural Support Plan, which protects the city's cultural heritage, lack any concrete arguments. They artificially tie it to the city's new General Plan, which they ostensibly intend to legitimize previous decisions regarding new construction, land allocation, and the destruction of public green spaces. But those who claim this don't even understand what a Historical and Architectural Support Plan is. First and foremost, it's a document that objectively records all landmarks and cultural heritage sites within the city, their protected zones, and historical areas. But such a simple documentary record is legally significant and will be impossible to ignore, as everything recorded in the Historical and Architectural Support Plan is subject to unconditional preservation!
So, returning to the title of this article, let's note that Kyiv has become a veritable "Bermuda Triangle" when it comes to monuments and cultural heritage sites, where monuments disappear without a trace, but not without benefiting certain officials. After all, tidying up the lists of monuments is a difficult and time-consuming task. This task is the responsibility of the local cultural heritage protection agency—the infamous Kyiv Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. Keeping the lists of monuments in order is the foundation for protecting the cultural heritage of any city—from Vienna and Paris to Kyiv and Zhmerynka. Why? Because the city community, experts, and officials must know exactly what needs to be protected.
But what can you do when a city has a large number of monuments and cultural heritage sites—several thousand? The lists and inventories can be so confusing that even officials themselves are confused. Some sites are duplicated, while others are lost, and not just for fun, but at great expense. If necessary, law enforcement can chalk it all up to a "technical error."
The official website of the city's Department for Cultural Heritage Protection lists its main areas of work. One of them is formulated as follows: "ensuring the identification, scientific study, classification, protection, preservation, proper maintenance, and appropriate use of cultural heritage sites." This formulation raises the following, far from rhetorical, question: "Who can clearly answer how many cultural heritage sites there are in Kyiv?" The Department's website contains lists of cultural heritage sites; the information is conveniently presented by city districts. But the most important thing is missing: the total number of cultural heritage sites in the city. If you don't bother too much and do some basic calculations by district, the total comes out to 3436 sites (anyone can check this for themselves with a calculator). However, the website contains a very strange note: "In each individual case, to determine the status of a site, it is necessary to contact the Main Department for Cultural Heritage Protection of the executive body of the Kyiv City Council (Kyiv City State Administration) with a corresponding request due to changes in street names, house numbers, letter designations, and monitoring of the status of cultural heritage sites for the current period." I wonder if these are the only reasons? Maybe there's something else entirely at play here?
Interesting questions continue. For example: why doesn't the Administration post its orders on the website, which easily register cultural heritage sites, or just as easily (by its own order) remove them from the state register? How much does it cost to "lose" such a site or make some "technical errors"? Incidentally, the errors could have been considered technical or mechanical, if we weren't talking about 60 sites!
The Research Institute for Monument Protection Studies of the Ministry of Culture developed the Kyiv Historical and Architectural Framework Plan. This institute's website contains information about Kyiv's "lost" cultural heritage sites, stating that, according to the city's Historical and Architectural Framework Plan, the total number of monuments is 3500. So why are the city's lists so much fewer (3436)? And why are the numbers different everywhere? Let's do some simple arithmetic: 3500 - 3436 = 64 (this is despite the fact that the lists of the City Council are repeated several times, thus inflating the total number). Where did these 64 monuments disappear to?
The list of "disagreements" can be analyzed. The odd thing is that 45 of these objects were registered with the state by orders of the City Administration. But what these orders are (namely, No. 53 of September 25, 2006, No. 10/38-11 of June 25, 2011, No. 16 of March 18, 1999, No. 10/34-11 of June 10, 2011, No. 69 of December 29, 1998, No. 15 of April 2, 1998, No. 43 of February 17, 2005) are unknown to the public because they are not in the public domain! The most interesting among them is, of course, order No. 53 - it concerns 29 objects!!!
All these landmarks and cultural heritage sites, "lost" in the bureaucratic wilderness, are of great historical and cultural value. This isn't some Lenin on Bessarabka! Among the "lost" are the archaeological site on Velyka Zhitomirska Street, monuments to the victims of the totalitarian regime and those who died for Ukraine, the birthplace of Mikhail Bulgakov (!!!), as well as dozens of historic buildings along Gogolivska, Olesya Honchar, Zhylianska, Kostyolnaya, Mala Zhitomirska, Mykhailivska, Prorizna, Pushkinska, Trehsvyatitelska, Yaroslaviv Val, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Verkhniy and Nizhniy Val, Desyatinny Lane, Tarasa Shevchenko Boulevard, Mezhyhirska, Vozdvizhenska, Voloska, Pokrovska, Prityssko-Nikolska, Frunze, Khoryva, Igorevska, and Grushevsky Streets. This list of streets is nothing less than a gold mine for Kyiv developers, who own the city's most expensive real estate. Therefore, all the "lost" landmarks are tomorrow's construction sites.
Apparently, all these sites were "lost" between 2008 and 2014. At that time, the city administration was successively led by two "monument guardians" all too familiar to Kyiv residents: first, Ruslan Ivanovich Kukharenko, and then by his loyal deputy, student, and successor, Yakov Yakovlevich Dikhtyar (Degtyar). So, let's not ask: who gave the orders for such an awkward compilation of landmark lists? And who "accidentally" omitted some of them? Everything is clear. After all, it's easier to manage a site that doesn't have monument status: there's no need to develop the necessary documentation, get it approved, or obtain permits... I wonder how much this might cost, and who receives the funds? The one performing the technical work, or the one making the decisions? There are rumors circulating in Kyiv that the one-time cost of such a service is tens of thousands of dollars. This is precisely why a large administration, which only oversees the city of Kyiv, can't cope with its own cultural heritage sites...
We hope that law enforcement agencies also understand who in Kyiv benefited from the monuments being left in disarray.
And finally: Kyiv's unfortunate monument chaos has already spread throughout Ukraine: no sooner had Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko fired the thoroughly compromised Yakiv Dikhtyar (he was the one who sold Kyiv's landmarks under the "regional" government), than this "valuable" figure was hired by the Ministry of Culture. There, he headed... the monument inventory department! So: amid talk of lustration and anti-corruption, the old "pike has been thrown back into the river." Now monuments will be "lost" not by the dozens, but by the hundreds! If Kyiv residents continue to remain silent.
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