Activists from the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) staged a "public trial" of Bolshevism on Mykhailivska Square in central Kyiv.
They erected a plaster statue, Lenin on His Knees, showing the leader of the proletariat clad in a red jacket and grey trousers. However, the action drew few participants.
But the few who did join the protest carried posters rebuking Communists for organizing mass political repressions, building concentration camps, destroying Ukraine’s intellectuals and Autocephalous Orthodox Church, cooperating with the Nazis and unleashing World War II.
A moment of silence was observed for "the victims of the Communist regime."
"We want the central and local governments to remove the visual vestiges of the totalitarian regime from Ukraine, and pull down monuments to Lenin, including in Kyiv. No monuments to Lenin must remain in Kyiv for the mere reason that thousands of Ukrainians were destroyed on his order," CUN leader Volodymyr Manko told the press.
Nov. 7 can only be marked as the day of memory for victims of the Communist regime, he said.
Manko said his organization is urging the Communists to come to their senses and "to stop singing along to the tune of the Party of Regions’ oligarchs, and not to help them pursue an anti-social policy."
Nov. 7 marks the 94th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia.
