Statue of Taras Shevchenko

Statue of Taras Shevchenko

In addition to numerous statues that pay homage to famous Americans, D.C. is also home to many that honor foreign heroes.  Some examples I’ve already visited are well-known, such as The Nelson Mandela Statue in Front of the South African Embassy and the Statue of Sir Winston Churchill.  Many others are less well-known, such as the Statue of Crown Princess Märtha, the Statue of Elefthérios Venizélos, and the Statue of Brigadier General Thaddeus Kościuszko.  But I haven’t yet visited many of the city’s hundreds, if not thousands of these statues.  And I think I better start prioritizing them during my bike rides so I can see them before angry mobs of rioters eventually tear them all down.

On this bike ride, I saw one of these statues that I hadn’t visited before – the Taras Shevchenko Memorial, which is located in the 2200 block of P Street (MAP) in northwest D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood.  It is the 83rd statue to be profiled in this blog.

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer.  His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.

The idea of a U.S. monument honoring Shevchenko began with the American Shevchenko Society, founded in 1898. The society did not achieve its goal of erecting a monument, but the idea did not die out, and many Ukrainian-Americans continued to pursue the creation of a Shevchenko monument.

The inscriptions on the memorial best describe the man and the reasons for the statue.  The inscription on north face of statue base reads:

Dedicated to the Liberation, Freedom and Independence of all Captive Nations

This monument of Taras Shevchenko, 19th century Ukrainian poet and fighter for the independence of Ukraine and the freedom of all mankind, who under foreign Russian imperialist tyranny and colonial rule appealed for “The New and Righteous Law of Washington,” was unveiled on June 27, 1964. This historic event commemorated the 150th anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth. The memorial was authorized by the 86th Congress of the United States of America on August 31, 1960, and signed into Public Law 86-749 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States of America on September 13, 1960. The statue was erected by Americans of Ukrainian ancestry and friends.

And an inscription on reverse face of the relief sculpture of Prometheus reads:

“…Our soul shall never perish. Freedom knows no dying.
And the greedy cannot harvest
fields where seas are lying.”

“Cannot bind the living Spirit
nor the living Word.
“Cannot smirch the sacred glory
of Th’Almighty Lord.”

 

[Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos]

NOTE:  A second Ukrainian monument was approved by the U.S. Congress in 2006.  The monument honors the millions of Ukrainians who died as a result of the 1932–1933 Holodomor, a famine-genocide caused by the Soviet Union.  The memorial site is located on a triangular lot on Massachusetts Avenue near Union Station.  On December 2, 2008, a dedication ceremony was held at the future site for the Holodomor Memorial, with Ukraine’s then-First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko among the speakers.  Formally dedicated on November 7, 2015, it is also the second memorial in D.C. to honor victims of Communism, the other being the Victims of Communism Memorial, also located near Union Station.

The Holodomor Memorial

The Holodomor Memorial

During this bike ride I picked up some take-out in Chinatown and then rode over to a Lower Senate Park across from Union Station to watch the travelers coming and going while I ate my General Tso’s chicken. But on the way to the park I happened upon a memorial I had not seen before.  I would come to find out that it is The Holodomor Memorial, and it is located at the intersection of North Capitol Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and F Streets (MAP) in northwest D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood.

The Holodomor Memorial was designed by Larysa Kurylas, a local architect.  Her design, “Field of Wheat,” was chosen for the memorial through an open competition.  It built by the National Park Service and the Ukrainian government, and opened on November 7, 2015.  Formally known as The Holodomor Memorial to Victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–1933, it was built to honor the victims of a brutal artificial famine imposed by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime on the Ukraine and primarily ethnically Ukrainian areas in the Northern Caucasus in 1932 and 1933 that killed an officially estimated 7 million to 10 million people.  Also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, it was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country.

The word Holodomor is from the Ukrainian word Голодомо́р, which is derived from морити голодом and is translated as, “to kill by starvation”.   Using Holodomor in reference to the famine emphasizes its man-made aspects, arguing that actions such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement confer intent and, therefore, define the famine as genocide.

Despite a targeted loss of life comparable to that of the Holocaust, many people remain unaware of the genocide.  So in addition to honoring the victims, another purpose of the memorial is to educate the American public about the genocide.  And today it achieved its purpose by educating one more.

         
[Click on the photos to view the full-size versions]