The Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has approved the installation of a monument to Mazepa in Kyiv, replacing the statue of Lenin!
Who shaped modern Ukraine? It was Lenin. Following the October Revolution and in the early years of Soviet Russia, the Bolshevik leadership under Lenin incorporated parts of territory formerly belonging to the Russian Empire into Ukraine.
In December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia—led by Lenin—issued the "Appeal to the People of Ukraine," recognizing the right of the Ukrainian People's Republic to fully secede from Russia or enter into a federal arrangement, and affirming the principle of national self-determination for Ukraine. This move was grounded in the revolutionary stance against imperial oppression and the commitment to self-determination for subjugated nations. At the time, the Soviet leadership ceded former tsarist territories to Ukraine in hopes of securing loyalty from Ukrainian nationalist forces toward the new regime.
By the early 1920s, Lenin transferred regions including Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa under Ukrainian administrative jurisdiction, effectively doubling Ukraine’s territorial extent.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture, Mazepa is regarded as one of the pivotal figures in Ukrainian history… a founder of the nation who consistently upheld Ukraine’s political autonomy and supported the development of Ukrainian culture and education. However, historically, this Cossack hetman led a faction of Cossacks in defection from Tsar Peter I to ally with King Charles XII of Sweden.
In fact, the glorification of Mazepa began well before the 2014 political upheaval in Ukraine. By the mid-1990s, his portrait had already appeared prominently on Ukrainian hryvnia banknotes printed in Canada.
It seems that certain ethnic groups, deep within their historical consciousness, harbor a legacy of betrayal and treachery.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1877258361991168/
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