Mother Ukraine

Mother Ukraine (Україна-Мати ) is a monumental Soviet-era statue in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. The sculpture is a part of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. In 2023, the Soviet heraldry was removed from the monument's shield and replaced with Ukraine's coat of arms, the tryzub.

Name
The monument's initial name was the Mother Motherland (Батьківщина-мати), which derives from Russian Mother Motherland (Родина-мать), a name for the national personification used by both Russia and the Soviet Union. Along with other monuments built across the USSR (e.g. The Motherland Calls in Volgograd, Russia), the statue originally symbolized Soviet victory in the Second World War. On 29 July 2023, amidst the removal of the Soviet heraldry from the monument, the director of the memorial complex Yuri Savchuk announced that it would be renamed to Mother Ukraine.

Description
The titanium statue stands 62 m tall with the overall structure measuring 102 m including its base and weighing 560 tonnes. The sword in the statue's right hand is 16 m long, weighing 9 tonnes, with the left hand holding up a 13 by shield originally emblazoned with the hammer and sickle emblem of the Soviet Union. Initially, the statue was drawn by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich. Vuchetich based the statue on the Ukrainian painter Nina Danyleiko. When Vuchetich died in 1974, the project was continued by Vasyl Borodai, who used Ukrainian sculptor Halyna Kalchenko, a daughter of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR Nikifor Kalchenko, as the model.

The base of the statue houses the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. The memorial hall of the museum displays marble plaques with carved names of more than 11,600 soldiers and over 200 workers of the home-front honoured during the war with the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Hero of Socialist Labour. On the hill beneath the museum, traditional flower shows are held. The sword of the statue was shortened by four meters from its project height. Some sources claim this was done so that the tip of the sword was lower than the cross of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. In reality, however, it was done to resolve aerodynamic problems identified during wind tunnel testing by specialists from Moscow.

Background
In the 1950s there were plans to construct twin monuments of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, nearly 200 m tall each on the site. However, this did not go ahead. Instead, according to legend, in the 1970s, a group of Communist Party officials and Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich looked across at the hills by the Lavra and decided the panorama needed a war memorial. Vuchetich had designed the other two most famous giant Soviet war memorials, The Motherland Calls in Volgograd and the Soviet soldier carrying German infant in East Berlin. The statue was modelled after one of his coworkers, Mila Hazinsky. However, after Vuchetich died in 1974, the design of the memorial was substantially reworked, and only the eyes and eyebrows remained from the original face. It was then completed under the guidance of Vasyl Borodai.

In 2023 Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 interviewed the grandson of Vasyl Borodai who presented them with the original projects of the statue. According to him, the sculptor originally wanted the statue to hold a palm branch, the symbol of peace. The Communist Party, however, wanted a sword.

Final plans for the statue were made in 1978, with construction beginning in 1979. It was controversial, with many criticising the costs and claiming the funds could have been better spent elsewhere. When Director of Construction Ivan Petrovich was asked to confirm the cost of 9 million rubles, he responded that this was a conservative estimate. The statue was opened in 1981 in a ceremony attended by Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

In modern-day Kyiv, the statue remains controversial, with some claiming it should be pulled down and its metal used for more functional purposes. Financial shortages mean that the flame, which uses up to 400 m3 of gas per hour, can only burn on the most prominent national holidays, and rumours persist that the statue is built on unstable foundations, something vehemently denied by the Kyiv city government.

In popular culture
A scene in the 2006 novel World War Z depicts a Ukrainian tank commander and his surviving men fleeing in their vehicles from an abandoned and burning Kyiv under the watchful gaze of the monument.

The monument was the site of a pit stop during the tenth episode of The Amazing Race 10.

The monument is prominently featured in the music video for the song "Get Out" by the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit.

Decommunisation
In April 2015, the parliament of Ukraine outlawed Soviet and communist symbols, street names, and monuments as part of the decommunisation of Ukraine. However, World War II monuments are excluded from these laws. Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Viatrovych stated in February 2018 that the Soviet state emblem on the shield of the monument should be removed to comply with the country's decommunisation laws and replace it with the Ukrainian trident coat of arms.

With the start of Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 the derussification process had begun in order to remove Russia's influence in Ukraine.

On 6 May 2023, the Ministry of Culture announced that plans to remove the Soviet crest and replace it with the Ukrainian tryzub were underway.

On 13 July 2023, the DIAM urban planning agency announced that the Soviet state emblem would be replaced with the Ukrainian trident coat of arms. DIAM claims that in 2022, 85% of 800,000 consulted citizens favoured replacing the Soviet imagery with the trident emblem. The work to remove the Soviet emblem began on 13 July 2023.

On 1 August, the Soviet emblem was removed from the Motherland Monument. Its replacement by the Ukrainian Trident, designed by Ukrainian sculptor Oleksiy Perhamenshchyk, began on 5 August 2023, as part of the preparations for the Independence Day of Ukraine on 24 August. It was completed on schedule despite the crew facing problems of intense wind, heavy rain and Russian air raids.

The emblem replacement raised a controversy about the state budget spending during the wartime. Before the work was finished Ukrainian parliament voted to dismiss Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko.