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Unironically, I do.
Hell I think he already deserves to be honored for his few but important good deeds or generally as an important historical figure even though he did great evil. And that's coming from someone who despises all forms of totalitarianism. I see no more reason to destroy his statues as I do Lenin's. Who is as great and terrible a man in many ways. Nazi iconoclasm seems more a feature of boomer mythical truth than any reasoned view of history if you ask me.
Kayne might have said it extremely poorly but I think he was right on that. It is good (and most importantly Christian) to be able to use forgiveness to separate good and evil in the legacy of all men.
But this is all besides the point, Catherine the Great wasn't Hitler.
For a more relevant example, was it not silly to rename Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad?
Well, I applaud you for being ideologically consistent in your views at least. That's not a terrible lens to have when looking at historical figures, although popular perception of history isn't going to be nearly as nuanced, obviously. Most people interpret "statue" as "noble individual", and I mostly agree. I think the nuanced view can be reserved for the history textbooks for the people who really care.
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I think it's fair that if someone is primarily famous for his bad deeds, or if his statue there is primarily to commemorate his bad deeds, then yes, tear his statue down. (And this means immediate and direct bad deeds.) I am also more inclined to agree with tearing down a statue down if it was put up by the person on the statue for his personal aggrandizement, rather than put up by someone else as a historical monument, or if it was otherwise put up in such a way that the people who lived there had no say in it going up.
Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin statues would fall under the first point, and at least Hitler and Stalin under the second, and probably most Lenin statues too (since ex-Communist states removed them quickly when they got a chance to). If some place (perhaps Stalin's birthplace) put up a statue of Stalin years after the fact because such an important historical figure was born there, and it was not mainly meant to commemorate his bad deeds, sure, leave that one up.
The Catherine the Great statue had been there for a while after the fall of the Soviet Union and I'd say that for the last point, it no longer counts as being there without the people's say. I don't know enough about the statue or Ukrainian history to say whether it mainly commemmorates bad deeds.
What would even count as one, though? The closest examples I can think of are the Stalin statues that used to stand near the Moscow-Volga and Volga-Don canals, both of which were mainly constructed by GULAG prisoners, but even that is a bit of a stretch.
It's being famous for his bad deeds OR if the statue commemorates his bad deeds. Stalin falls under the former.
(So yes, my example of someone putting up a Stalin statue years after the fact isn't enough, unless it's hundreds of years after the fact and Stalin isn't well known any more).
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