\'Godhead Dethroned: Leninfall as Collective Esoteric Practice.\' Minima Ucrainica #6, July 2016

The violent toppling of the Vladimir Lenin monument in Kiev’s Taras Shevchenko Boulevard by far-right extremists on the 8th December 2013 was a dramatic moment in the Euromaidan Protests, widely televised across the globe. Over a hundred Lenin statues and Soviet monuments will face destruction in the year to come, well ahead of the official start of the decommunization process in April 2015. This forceful purging of the urban and rural environment of the Communist figurehead’s images would become known as Leninopad, or Leninfall. Although the toppling of statues of political figureheads is a common trait of regime overhauls, upon closer examination, the phenomenon of Leninfall presents a rather curious example of post-Soviet collective esoteric practice. The Mother Goddess archetype that is the Ukrainian landscape is liberated of the host of phallic columns that have sought to dominate it forevermore. The plinth, at once battleground and burial-ground, remains empty: what should replace the downcast idol?