Role of great Ukrainian writer
Across the University named after Taras Shevchenko there is a monument to this most famous and notable Ukrainian. The monument was constructed in 1939 (architect Matvei Manizer) when the whole world marked the 125th anniversary of his birthday. It replaced the monument to Russian Tsar Nickolas I, the one who initiated the persecution of the poet and who announced him his “personal enemy”. It is difficult to overestimate the role of Shevchenko in the past and at present time. His influence on the Ukrainian culture has been so immense, that even at Soviet times, when the official position was to downplay strong Ukrainian nationalism expressed in his poetry, suppressing any mention of it, the biggest accent was put on his social and anti-Tsarist aspects of his legacy, the Class struggle within the Russian Empire. So he became poet “number one” in Soviet Ukraine.
Poet which formed the modern Ukrainian literature.
Taras Shevchenko has a unique place in Ukrainian cultural history and in world literature. His writings formed the foundation for the modern Ukrainian literature to a degree that he is also considered the founder of the modern written Ukrainian language (although Ivan Kotliarevskyi pioneered the literary work in what was close to the modern Ukrainian in the end of the eighteenth century). Shevchenko's poetry contributed greatly to the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness, and his influence on various facets of Ukrainian intellectual, literary, and national life is still felt to this day. Influenced by Romanticism, Shevchenko managed to find his own manner of poetic expression that encompassed themes and ideas germane to Ukraine and his personal vision of its past and future.
You can “see” Shevchenko all round the world!
Travelling round Ukraine you can hardly find a place where there is no monument to the poet. Outside of Ukraine monuments to Shevchenko have been put up in several locations of the former USSR associated with his legacy, both in the Soviet and the post-Soviet times. After Ukraine gained its independence in the wake of the 1991 Soviet Collapse, some Ukrainian cities replaced their statues of Lenin with statues of Taras Shevchenko and in some locations that lacked streets named to him, local authorities renamed the streets or squares to Shevchenko, even though these sites usually have little or no connection to his biography. Outside of Ukraine and the former USSR, monuments to Shevchenko have been put up in many countries, usually under the initiative of local Ukrainian Diasporas. There are several memorial societies and monuments to him throughout Canada and the United States, most notably a monument in Washington, D.C., near Dupont Circle. There is also a monument in Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, United States. The town of Vita in Manitoba, Canada was originally named Shevchenko in his honor. There is a Shevchenko Square in Paris located in the heart of the central Saint-Germaine-des-Prés district. The Leo Mol sculpture garden in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, contains many images of Taras Shevchenko. All in all there are about 1400 monuments to Shevchenko, 128 out of them are located abroad in 35 countries. The pedestal has the four last lines from his poetic testament:
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.
