Novobohdanivka. September 30, 2016
The village of Korzhi is attempting to sell its statue for $15,000 to fund repairs to the local kindergarten and school. The price is high, and they have had no offers. The local mechanic in charge of the sale expects he will eventually have to trade it for scrap metal for less than $3,000. June 3, 2016
Niels Ackermann: The project's genesis happened in the early days of the Maidan Revolution, on December 8, 2013, when nationalist protesters toppled the Lenin monument on Bessarabska Square, in the center of Kiev. This was the first sign of weakness from the regime, and it started a viral movement called Leninopad. Try "#Leninopad" on Google, YouTube, Twitter, and you'll find interesting stuff. I was there, and I saw how protesters were hitting on this solid rock super hard. To destroy it, but also to take home a little souvenir. It felt like looking at people crushing Berlin Wall. But this statue's red quartzite—the same as for Lenin mausoleum in Moscow and Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb in Paris—was very resistant and only small fragments were broken. But on the following morning, nothing was left. So, with Sébastien, we started investigating to find this statue. A difficult quest that's still ongoing, but it led us to discover tons of other monuments.Sébastien Gobert: It was a way for both of us to forget the revolution and the war we had been covering, and to deal with Ukraine-related issues in a different way. Something interesting and less bloody. It became serious quite quickly.Why did you decide to focus on Ukraine specifically?
Gobert: Ukraine is especially important for this project for two reasons. First, because since May 2015, the government passed Decommunization Laws making the glorification of Soviet symbols illegal—similar to Nazi symbols. So, all these monuments had to disappear. And that leads us to the second reason: Ukraine had by far the highest density of Lenins per square meter on Earth. In 1991, there were 5,500 statues in Ukraine against 7,000 in Russia. But Russia is 28 times bigger. Now, officially, not a single statue is left. So our work is here to question this decommunization process: How is it perceived by its inhabitants? How is it conducted, and what can this process tell us about the country?
This Lenin head is more than two meters tall and previously stood on the site of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in Chernobyl. It is now stored in a room used by the facility cleaning staff. Despite the authorities claims of contamination, no significant levels of radiation were found. October 6, 2016
Ackermann: My goal as a photojournalist—and I insist even more when I see all the scandals occurring these days about staged or retouched documentary works—is to photograph things as is without staging them. I do my best to capture strong and beautiful images, but nothing is added or moved by us. Very often we even had to ask people not to touch anything when they showed us their statues. It's important to show these statues as they are now. Without any artifice, to show the condition of decay, abandon, or in some cases glorification. There's something that fascinates me when I see that some statues that were in the center of some big cities become instantly some sort of an annoying piece of waste occupying someone's backyard. A bit like Ukrainian's Soviet past: They didn't chose to have it, but it's here.Gobert: Another element that was important in our approach is that we never judge. We don't say whether what we see or hear is good or bad. It's not our history. We are foreigners and judging the way Ukrainians deal with their Soviet past would be very inappropriate. What matters for us is to provide a panorama of the situation and to show to the rest of the world the complexity of this issue. We may think that it makes sense to take Lenin down. But it's not as consensual as this. The same with the idea of keeping it, transforming it, preserving it. Besides, the act of toppling in itself does not solve a number of issues. Where does Lenin go? What next? Which memory of it? This is the philosophy beneath the pictures and the stories. To show that this is an undecided issue.
Shabo, Odessa region. November 21, 2015
Both: Every time there was an opportunity to photograph a statue and to reach it, we did it. Some required long negotiations; some were a matter of five minutes chat. On average, it took about one week of work for every statue. The first ones we found running random queries on Google Image. For example, by typing "Lenin garage" in Ukrainian, or "Lenin [name of a city]" and then picking the most surprising image we could find. It led us to articles about the toppling, which then led us, sometimes, to information about its location. But it's often very tough because Lenin moves rather quickly for a dead guy. His monuments are moved, transformed, broken, stolen, sold… Sometimes we just arrived a few days too late. We did develop an extensive network also on social media. People interested in our work were telling us about Lenin locations and helping us with contacts.Sometimes the people we meet start to talk, tell, complain, scream. The common trend is that each and everyone has something to say about Lenin. You say the word "Lenin," and people have a reaction to express. When it comes to other Soviet monuments or mosaics, people usually have to reflect for a few seconds. When it comes to Lenin, everyone has a readymade opinion. There were people who proved suspicious and closed up, of course. The Bessarabska Lenin, for example, has led us to understand that a private collector has it—he grabbed it illegally. So he is cautious, and does not want to talk, despite repeated attempts.
We had a fun story with the city administration of Melitopol, a city in southeastern Ukraine. We knew they had three monuments, taken down and parked somewhere. We asked to see them. We called. We wrote letters. We tried to ask high-ranking contacts to help us. We went there twice. We talked to a few civil servants. Nothing worked. The only answer we got was from the press officer of the city: "We cannot allow you to see our Lenins. Your project does not depict our city and our country in a positive way." This has to do also with the vision of Soviet aesthetics: Everything has to have a shiny and bright façade even if reality is more dusty and rusty. In that perspective, allowing us to take pictures of Lenin in a warehouse was not acceptable for them. On the contrary, we were contacted by people who were really interested to have us over. "I have a Lenin, come and have a tea with me and take a picture!" This happened to us very recently in Kiev."You say the word 'Lenin,' and people have a reaction to express. When it comes to Lenin, everyone has a readymade opinion."
Teplivka. July 26, 2016
Gobert: First of all, there are some strong emotional factors that go beyond any kind of ideological belief. Nostalgia for a better time, for a time when the environment was safer, when cities were cleaner, when people had jobs, when people were younger. We see a lot of these reactions occurring in Ukraine where people had to undergo tremendous upheavals in the course of their lifetimes.
Ackermann: Again, there's not one single answer to this question. Among the 5,500 monuments erected in Ukraine, most were industrially produced concrete copies of a very limited artistic value. But some, made out of more noble materials, had more artistic properties.One interesting point that was highlighted during one of our conference is how some of these Soviet monuments lost their political meaning. (It was mostly said about some ornamental mosaics). They were seen just for their beauty and their message was perceived as quite neutral. But when the decommunization process started, suddenly, people started looking at them as pieces of Soviet propaganda because they were created during Soviet time. Associated again with their political meaning, they now have to disappear for some. I recently traveled to Yekaterinburg, in Russia. Their Lenin statue is in the center of the city. But if you look at the pictures taken on the central square on Instagram, you'll find less than one percent of these pictures with this gigantic statue. It's not even mentioned on most of the city maps. It's there, but nobody cares about it. While in Ukraine, debate had rarely been that rich. Sometimes I wonder if, by removing Lenin from their cities, Ukrainians didn't make him more central than ever in their heads.Scroll down for more photos.

