Ukraine swaps over the Soviet-era hammer and sickle with a trident on the Kiev Monument

One of the most iconic symbols in the country, the towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv, lost its hammer-and-sickle logo on Sunday when authorities swapped it out for the nation’s trident coat of arms. In response to Russia’s continuing invasion, the action is a part of a larger movement to restore Ukraine’s cultural identity from its Communist past.

The 200-foot (61-meter) Mother Ukraine monument, which was built in 1981 as part of a larger complex holding the national World War II museum, is situated in Kyiv on the right bank of the Dnieper River and faces east toward Moscow.

The statue, which was made to resemble a bold female warrior, is holding a sword and a shield. But today, the shield bears the Ukrainian tryzub, the trident that was chosen as the coat of arms of independent Ukraine on February 19, 1992, in place of the hammer-and-sickle insignia.

Late in July, work for removing the previous insignia started, but it was hindered by bad weather and continued air attacks. The sculpture’s formal unveiling will take place on August 24 in honor of Ukraine’s Independence Day. The statue, once known as the “Motherland monument” when Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union, has a new name to go along with its renovation.

The modification is only a piece of Ukraine’s ongoing drive to purge Russian and Soviet remnants from its public places. This has often included dismantling monuments and renaming streets to celebrate Ukrainian artists, poets, and warriors rather than Russian cultural icons.

In 2015, Ukraine prohibited the majority of Soviet and Communist Party emblems, but not World War II memorials like the Mother Ukraine statue. The removal of the hammer and sickle from the monument was supported by almost 85% of Ukrainians, according to statistics from the nation’s Culture Ministry published last year.

The Holodomor, a man-made famine under Josef Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians and was recognized as an act of genocide by both the European Parliament and the United States, are among the Soviet past’s associations for many Ukrainians, along with Russian imperialism, the suppression of the Ukrainian language, and Russian imperialism.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the trend away from Soviet symbols has increased. As the nation suffers under the horror of war, national identity statements have become a crucial sign of unification.

The website of Ukraine’s national World War II museum issued a statement about the removal of the insignia, referring to the Soviet coat of arms as a representation of a totalitarian system that “destroyed millions of people.”

“We have removed the indicators of our membership in the ‘post-Soviet space’ along with the coat of arms. We are a sovereign, independent, and free Ukraine, not a “post-” Ukraine.