UKRAINE: LYUDMILLA DEINEKA COLLECTS MEMORABILIA OF LENIN AND STALIN TO PRESERVE UKRAINE'S COMMUNIST /SOVIET HISTORY

Record ID: 831620

  • Title: UKRAINE: LYUDMILLA DEINEKA COLLECTS MEMORABILIA OF LENIN AND STALIN TO PRESERVE UKRAINE'S COMMUNIST /SOVIET HISTORY
  • Date: 12th August 2000
  • Summary: KIEV, UKRAINE (FILE - 1991) (REUTERS) WIDE OF STATUE OF VLADIMIR LENIN CLOSE UP OF ANTI COMMUNIST GRAFFITI VARIOUS, WORKMEN DISMANTLING STATUE (3 SHOTS) LVOV, UKRAINE (FILE - 1991) (REUTERS) TV PEOPLE SURROUNDING BASE WHERE STATUE OF LENIN STOOD VARIOIUS, PEOPLE PLACING NETTLES ON THE BASE OF PLINTH (2 SHOTS) GV, TOP OF LENIN STATUE LYING DISCARDED ON GROUND (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 27th August 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: GLUKHIV, KIEV & LVOV, UKRAINE
  • City:
  • Country: Russian Federation Ukraine
  • Topics: History,Quirky,Domestic Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA1ZMAZPA1GZ3Z662AHHOBK3C5Y
  • Story Text: A communist in the ex-Soviet state of Ukraine has turned her house into a museum of Soviet culture in order to protect what she believes is her nation's glorious, fading history.
    Lyudmilla Deineka is bringing a bag full of valuables to her home in rural northern Ukraine.
    This isn't the first time that she has struck lucky. Her house is filled with what she considers to be historical treasures.
    A Soviet flag. A painting of Vladimir Lenin. A portrait of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
    Every nook and cranny is filled with historical artifacts.
    A few of them, like the Orthodox icons and the 19th-century Russian paintings, are not connected to communism.
    But most of the items are.
    Today's treasures are books by Lenin, Marx, and a Soviet history of the Second World War.
    They are items that support or glorify Soviet rule. They are items that give Deineka further reasons to dust her Lenin busts with great reverance.
    Deineka is a diehard communist--and she's worried that modern Ukraine doesn't share her enthusiasm.
    When Ukraine parted from communism after the Soviet collapse in 1991, its people set upon and destroyed hundreds of communist monuments.
    They took down statues of Lenin and placed nettles--not flowers--at the base of monuments that they tore apart with their hands.
    In the heady days of late perestroika, it seemed to many Ukrainians that Lenin had been consigned to the dustbin of history.
    That's where Deineka has stepped in.
    She has taken in these discarded monuments and set up a small, packed museum in her own home and in her own yard.
    She pulls the items out of dustbins, she gets them as gifts, and she even buys some with her meager monthly pension of approximately 10 U.S. dollars (USD).
    Deineka says that her collection is a way to honour the past.
    "We should preserve this heritage, this work. Even if something was wrong in all of this, then we learned from our mistakes," says the retired teacher.
    She may be the only Ukrainian with dozens of Lenins on her bed and a few Soviet heroes in her yard--but many share her sentiment that life was better under the red flag.
    The communists are the largest opposition force in Ukraine and their support is especially strong among elderly who have suffered from neglect and confusion amid the new market.
    Deineka refuses to let this new world roll over her.
    Even in the day's setting sun, she heads off in her high heels down the road, pulling a cart so that she can carry back the treasures of the Soviet past.
    For now she will take care of and honour them, but she's ready to set them all back up when and if the hour comes.
    mos/jrc
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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