Prince Yaroslav the Wise Statue

The bronze monument to Grand Prince of Kyivan Rus (from 1019 to 1054) Yaroslav the Wise was unveiled in Kyiv in Zolotovoritska Square, near the west end face of the Golden Gate, in 1997. Yaroslav, son of the grand prince Vladimir the Great, was vice-regent of Novgorod at the time of his father’s death in 1015. The eldest surviving brother, Svyatopolk the Accursed, killed three of his other brothers and seized power in Kiev. Then Yaroslav, with the active support of the Novgorodians and the help of Varangian (Viking) mercenaries, defeated Svyatopolk and became the grand prince of Kyiv in 1019. Yaroslav began consolidating the Kyivan state through both cultural and administrative improvements and military campaigns. He promoted the spread of Christianity in the Kyivan Rus, gathered a large collection of books, and employed many scribes to translate Greek religious texts into the Slavic language. With the help of Byzantine architects and craftsmen, Yaroslav fortified and beautified Kyiv along Byzantine lines. He built the majestic St. Sophia Cathedral and the famous Golden Gate of the Kyivan fortress. Under Yaroslav the codification of legal customs and princely enactments was begun, and this work served as the basis for a law code called the Russkaya Pravda (“Russian Justice”).The monument in Kyiv is based on the project and idea by famous Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze. The copy of this monument can be found in Abdrievskiy Descent near the House-Museum and Studio of Ivan Kavaleridze. It is known that Kavaleridze worked on a several versions of Yaroslav the Wise Sculpture, and the one eventually embedded (after the author’s death, on the basis of a scatch found in his studio) was not at all among the author’s favourites and wasn’t supposed to be made in metal. The statue is made of bronze and is mounted on a granite pedestal established on a specially prepared earthen embankment. On the right side of the monument, there is a boulder on which ancient name of the prince is carved.There is a secret about this monument – on the Prince’s back one can find the three palm prints left by the sculptors Vitali Sivko, Nicholas Bilyk and Vitali Redko.