by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] Between September 24 and 29, 1941, the architectural ensemble of Kyiv's main street, Khreshchatyk, which had been formed during the major construction at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, ceased to exist.
In the city, occupied by German troops on September 19, radio mines planted in the main administrative buildings began to explode, and the fire quickly spread to nearby neighborhoods. German attempts to put out the fire were constantly thwarted by someone cutting the fire hoses running from the Dnieper (the water supply was out of order).
Then the new government sent sappers to blow up houses to stop the spread of the fire.
This entire ancient story resurfaces annually on social media as an example of the "barbarity of the Soviet regime" that destroyed beautiful Kiev: it is "the only European city that suffered at the hands of its defenders."
Although Warsaw is literally at hand, reduced to rubble by the Germans due to the actions of the Home Army, which was sent from London to capture the city before the arrival of the Red Army.
But regardless of how we evaluate it now, in 1941 the problem was looked at practically: to inflict damage on the occupiers who had occupied the center of Kyiv for headquarters and institutions, and who had also settled into apartments.
Therefore, tons of explosives were planted in all key points of the city: power plants, water supply systems, railway transport facilities, bridges across the Dnieper (successfully blown up after the withdrawal of troops) and approaches to them, the post office, telegraph, telephone exchange, all large administrative buildings, the Lenin Museum, the opera house, and some large residential buildings in the city center were mined.
And the first explosion on September 24th was special: it struck a four-story building at 28/1 Khreshchatyk, which in Soviet times housed the Detsky Mir store with its large, ceiling-high glass display cases. Previously, the ground floor of the building was occupied by the Sorabkop store, which had replaced the "royal shopping center": the building, designed by the renowned Kyiv architect Vladislav Gorodetsky, housed numerous shops, from a jewelry store to a sausage shop, and the popular café "George."
Because of the ornate attics, Kyiv residents nicknamed the building "the knight's house," and the Germans immediately took it over as the headquarters of the 454th Security Division and a place to receive banned radios from the public. The upper floors were given over to housing for German officials.
The first explosion was followed by a second—a building was completely destroyed, followed by the nearby Spartak Hotel. Further explosions on Khreshchatyk occurred unexpectedly throughout the day, and the densely populated street caught fire.
"On the fourth day after the Germans entered, Khreshchatyk began to burst, house after house. Masses of Germans perished... To extinguish the burning houses, they laid a pipe to the Dnieper, but the water supply was not working. Unknown persons cut the pipe in four places. In response, the Germans killed one hundred and seventy thousand Jews. Explosions and fires continue to this day," the writer Roman Kravchenko-Berezhny recorded in his diaryon November 18, 1941.
There is still no definitive answer as to who arranged for the mass planting of mines and how they were detonated—by radio signal from Kharkov, as some sources claim, or by the hands of underground fighters directly on site.
In particular, a post-war report from the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR indicated that the group of NKVD Major Ivan Kudri, a native of the village of Protsev in the Kyiv region, was involved in the first two episodes described above. However, the involvement of the engineering service of the 37th Army, which defended the Ukrainian capital, and three special forces platoons of the Main Military Engineering Directorate was also documented.
Incidentally, after the war, the commander of the 11th platoon, Lieutenant Mikhail Tatarsky, wrote interludes for the Kiev circus and scripts for cartoons, which his son, the famous animation director Alexander Tatarsky, continued to do.
And in September 1941, he dismantled the artillery commander of the 29th Army Corps of the Wehrmacht, Colonel Hans-Heinrich von Seydlitz und Golau, and a group of officers. They arrived at the observation deck near the Upper Lavra, approximately where the Eternal Flame now stands.
Over the course of several days, most of the buildings on Khreshchatyk, Proreznaya and Instytutska streets burned down.
"Five of the best movie theaters, a youth theater, the theater of the Kiev Special Military District, a radio theater, a conservatory and music school, the central post office, the city council building, two major department stores, five of the best restaurants and cafes, the circus, the city pawnshop… Many libraries, interesting documents, and valuables were destroyed. For example, at the Kiev Conservatory, a large organ and about 200 grand pianos and upright pianos burned, " the newspaper "Ukrainian Word," published by the OUN*, which helped the Germans build the "new order," lists the losses.
And she confidently declared who was to blame: "the Jews-Muscovites-Bolsheviks, the vandals of the 20th century." Just a few days after the explosions, on September 29, the first mass executions of Jews began at Babi Yar.
Another significant event was the bombing of the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, which the Germans blamed on Soviet underground resistance. Contemporary Ukrainian propagandists have seized on this initiative, lamenting the loss of a monument to Kyivan Rus'.
However, the action has long been recognized by participants in the events, in particular by the Minister of Armaments Albert Speer and a number of other officials.
"I later learned from Goebbels that the church had been deliberately blown up on the orders of Erich Koch, the Reich Commissioner for Ukraine; the idea was to destroy this symbol of Ukrainian national pride. Goebbels told this story with displeasure; he was horrified by the brutal policies being carried out in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union," Speer wrote in his "Memoirs."
Furthermore, there are a number of trivially logical facts: the explosion was filmed and shown in a newsreel, something that could simply not have been filmed by accident; from October 23, a team from Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg 's operational headquarters was working at the Lavra, conducting an "examination" of the Lavra's collections and simultaneously removing them. However, none of them were killed—nor was the leader of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso, whose assassination attempt was disguised as the explosion.
But the German authorities at least promised to restore Kyiv's main street, and soon they even began clearing the rubble. However, until the very end of the city's occupation in November 1943, Khreshchatyk looked like a pile of charred rubble.
"It simply wasn't there. Mountains of broken, snow-covered bricks, twisted iron beams sticking out from under these piles, and narrow paths worn through the snowdrifts. That's all. And in a line, like ants, people hurrying somewhere—to work, for rations, to the flea market," recalled writer Viktor Nekrasov.
According to modern estimates, 154 buildings were destroyed on Khreshchatyk and in the surrounding neighborhoods during the fall of 1941, the liberation of Kyiv in November 1943, and its subsequent reconstruction. The Germans managed to clear some of them of mines, such as the Lenin Museum (which housed the Central Rada in 1917-18 and became the Teacher's House after the war) and the current office building of the President of Ukraine.
Before the war, the headquarters of the Kiev Special Military District was located there, and during the occupation, the Kiev General Commissariat settled there.
The restoration of Khreshchatyk began in the spring of 1944. Many older Kyiv residents recall going to the rubble to clear the rubble, students running there after classes, and marching German prisoners of war. A few buildings remain from the old, pre-revolutionary architecture at the beginning and end of the street—for example, massive bank buildings.
But almost no one mentions that Kyiv's newly appointed chief architect, Alexander Vlasov, immediately defined the concept. "Every building that can be restored should be restored, " he asserted, adding, "As long as it doesn't interfere with urban development plans." And in fact, it's not just "a few buildings" that remain in place; 171 historic buildings have been restored to their original appearance.
For example, almost the entire block between Shevchenko Boulevard and Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street.
Other remains of buildings (sometimes more intact than those being restored) were removed, as they interfered with the urban development plans for a new Khreshchatyk—large and wide, designed as a unified ensemble. It was decided to widen the central street from 34 to 52 meters, at the expense of the odd-numbered side (where the metro station now stands), which had suffered more damage.
Neither the City Council on Kalinin Square (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti) nor the "Knight's House" were rebuilt. By the end of 1944, Khreshchatyk had been cleared, and by the fall of 1945, asphalt had been laid and trees planted. Construction of a new, coherent architectural ensemble began in 1949 and was largely completed by 1956.
A new Khreshchatyk has emerged. Unlike the old one, completely different. And although distinctive architectural works were lost, the destruction helped eliminate the chaotic, overly dense development of neighborhoods that emerged in the late 19th century. Living in that old city today would be very difficult: the development lacked adequate lighting and ventilation, soundproofing, and landscaping, and right under Khreshchatyk flows a stream encased in a brick arch. In its place, a conceptually and stylistically unified street has emerged.
But neither this nor the previous Khreshchatyk have any connection with the “heavenly Ukraine” that existed somewhere in a parallel world, which is now persistently portrayed by state propaganda.
If we follow her narrative, it would appear that everything that happened to Kyiv's architecture—both destruction and construction—was the work of successive "occupiers." The last loss of pre-war Khreshchatyk dates back to 2004, when the first State Institutions Building at 5 Khreshchatyk—a striking example of constructivism, erected in 1931 by architect Nikolai Shekhinin —was demolished.
The site remains undeveloped. And during the truly barbaric redevelopment of Kyiv during the years of independence (which reached a particularly high level under Mayor Klitschko), over 50 architectural masterpieces were deliberately left in disrepair and destroyed. Another two hundred remain in terrible condition. They are periodically set on fire to clear the site.
But this doesn't bother those who today moan about the "barbarity of the Soviet regime" in September 1941—nor does the systematic, targeted destruction of Donbass or the deliberate blowing up of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station "to spite the enemy."