Symbol of Ukraine's struggle for Independence: a bust of Hetman Ivan Mazepa unveiled in Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra
Kyiv • UNN
On December 1, a bust of Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa was unveiled in Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The ceremony was attended by representatives of the UINP and the National Reserve.
On Monday, December 1, a bust of Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa was unveiled in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. This was reported by UNN with reference to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
Details
The ceremony was attended by the head of the UINM Oleksandr Alfyorov, the sculptors Oles Sydoruk and Borys Krylov, and the acting general director of the National Reserve "Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra" Svitlana Kotlyarevska.
The participants of the ceremony congratulated everyone involved in the unveiling of the bust and emphasized the symbolic weight of Ivan Mazepa's figure in the struggle for an independent Ukraine from Russian domination.
Oleksandr Alfyorov emphasized the significant resistance that initiatives to honor the hetman's memory still face today.
Imagine, even for Moscow leaders (UOC-MP – ed.) it was easier to live on the street of the Bolshevik January Uprising than to accept that there would be Mazepa Street here
He also recalled the Russian expression "mazepintsy," which the occupation authorities used for a long time to label participants in the movement for Ukraine's independence.
Additionally
Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709) was a Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host who ruled for almost 22 years, sought to revive the Ukrainian state, and contributed to the cultural and economic flourishing of Left-Bank Ukraine. For a long time, he was an ally of the Russian Tsar Peter I, but due to Moscow's colonial policy towards Ukraine, in 1708 he sided with Sweden in the Great Northern War.
After the defeat of the Swedish King Charles XII, he fled to the Ottoman Empire. He died and was buried near the modern Moldovan city of Bender, buried in the Romanian city of Galați.
In Russian historiography (during tsarist and Soviet times – ed.), Mazepa was called a "traitor," and the Russian Orthodox Church, to which the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate belongs, anathematized Mazepa. Russians hold the same opinion today.
Recall
The National Museum of the History of Ukraine showed what a noble parade saber from the late 17th to the first half of the 18th centuries looks like. It features an image of Archangel Michael and a bust of the Polish King Stefan Báthory.