On December 5, workers were busy putting up the “nation’s chief Christmas tree” in Sofiiska Square, the tree having been brought from the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast a day before. They were also continuing to set up the Christmas city, and so the square has been fenced off with an iron barrier. The monument to Bohdan Khmelnytsky is now looking like a huge spider with yellow “legs,” made up by parts of the future city. For several days, a horse swing has been “proudly” sitting almost at the grave of Patriarch Volodymyr.
“I will go and get someone acting now, because it just cannot continue like this. A carousel has been installed there, the square is fenced-off and covered in lots of snow. I know that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has complained about it, Ukrainian culture figures phoned the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) so that they react to the situation,” the Sophia Sanctuary’s director general told us on December 5. “I do not know how you can rectify this, because Ihor Dobrutsky [founder of the Folk Ukraine project. – Author] listens to no one. You can do this with a completely different approach, but something else moves them all. I tried to explain, he sent his experts to me, but they left just like they came – unwilling to make any concessions. I am not sitting idly, I am phoning the KCSA all the time and talking to Serhii Anzhyiak [deputy director at the Department of Culture of the KCSA. – Author]. Thank God, he helped us to talk them out of their plan to put up a black wall, which would block the entrance to the sanctuary. Now, they have moved their swing close to the entrance...”
We sent a request to the KCSA past week to see if they consulted the management of the sanctuary on the setting up a Christmas city and what consultations, if any, were carried out to protect the UNESCO-listed monument from the dangers posed by a major fair held next to its walls. We have obtained no response so far, but they promise it will arrive any day now.
Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day
One can hardly hope to get the Christmas city relocated and the Christmas tree celebrations canceled. But it is important to form the right attitude to this phenomenon, which is out-and-out questionable from ethical and aesthetic perspectives. It violates the nation’s memory policies.
Another remarkable detail was the Folk Ukraine project’s organizers arranging a press tour to the Ivano-Frankivsk region, from which the tree was brought to Sofiiska Square, and gladly sharing photos of the tree’s “execution” on social networks. The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna commented on Facebook: “Some people quietly cut the trees down and take them away. Others cut them down and have fun, even though the public mood is, to put it mildly, not that conducive for it... But apparently, the Kremlin’s ‘chief Christmas tree of Russia’ is firmly entrenched in people’s minds. Listen, was it you who mocked Viktor Yanukovych so badly?! You stick to the same style, albeit you prefer embroidered shirts... And do not tell me that it is done the same way in Europe or America. It is not the same. Firstly, they have long stopped turning cutting-down into a much-advertised performance. It is a barbarian joy...”
We will monitor the developing of the Christmas city story and are still awaiting a response from the KCSA. Meanwhile, another disturbing news about Sophia Sanctuary made it to the media lately. On December 3, the sanctuary’s employee Tymur Bobrovsky posted on Facebook a photo of a thawed patch on its territory, which he called “a sign of close and, unfortunately, inevitable catastrophe.” “We know that an ancient dungeon, a monastery cellar of the 17th century is located here at a depth of four meters... Judging by the numerous recent subsidence events, the dungeon is deteriorating fast,” Bobrovsky said on the social network. The Sophia employee suggested that the dungeon affected the surface snow, because “a so-called eversion dome has formed in the dungeon’s vault, which has grown almost to the surface and started to ‘breathe’ through small cracks.” “Judging from the size of the thawed patch, the diameter of the depression which is about to appear at this spot will reach at least two meters,” Bobrovsky continued.
However, Nelia Kukovalska told us that the sanctuary’s experts checked on the thawed patch back on December 1 in the presence of Bobrovsky and found no cause for alarm. “Bobrovsky is planning a subsidence event there, but there is no reason for it to happen. We keep everything under control,” Kukovalska maintained. “There is a paved surface underground there, and the inertia of the material is at work. The paved surface accumulated heat back during the summer, therefore it now emits more heat than other areas. I have observed this phenomenon since 2005 if not longer. There are other such locations in the sanctuary, where we stumble upon old paved surfaces. We check them all.”
