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The monument to Catherine was demolished because Catherine the Great is associated with Russia. One should not look for some philosophical or historical meaning here. It's just a symbolic gesture against a pile of copper.
Again, she is the founder of Odessa. This is yet another farce.
A lot, as otherwise they wouldn't have their city.
This is such a goofy argument that's pretty clearly a result of motivated reasoning. Does ordering a city be founded at a particular location give a person some unassailable claim to have their statue there for all eternity? If you honestly think it does, you need to do a lot more work to back up that assertion. Statues aren't just some note in a history book. They're meant to glorify a particular historical figure. Given Cathy's association with Russia, and Russia's current actions against Ukraine, it ought to be pretty understandable why the people of Odessa don't want to glorify the leader of a nation that's currently terror bombing them and engaging in war crimes left and right.
Yes. Absolutely. And of course.
Frankly I find the opposite opinion very strange. Honoring creators and founders is probably one of the most ancient and universal traditions of humanity.
War propaganda is extremely petty in comparison.
Founders of cities are honored with a statue if they're seen as honorable, not just because they happened to found a city.
If Hitler happened to found a city somewhere in occupied Russia during WW2, do you think Hitler is entitled to have a statue of himself in that city forever?
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?
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.
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