Unidentified people poured red paint over a memorial plaque on the facade of the Mikhail Bulgakov House Museum in Kyiv. As director of the museum Lyudmila Gubianuri told the Strana edition, the decision was made not to wash the board:
“We will leave it that way. This is also communication. Everything is clear why this is happening, because of what. History does not need to be banned, it needs to be explained that such personalities as Bulgakov require an explanation, because it is still our history. We must understand why it happened, why there were such views or not. Not everyone knows. Most often, his works are quoted, not really understanding what the historical context is, what exactly he wrote, what his political views were.
A new board with a portrait of the writer was installed on the facade a few days ago. On the old board there was an inscription in Russian saying that Bulgakov was a Russian and Soviet writer. In the new version, the inscription in Ukrainian reads: "In this house in 1906-1919 lived an outstanding resident of Kiev, doctor, writer Mikhail Bulgakov." According to the museum, they decided to change the sign "at the initiative of the team" and in accordance with the law on the state language.
In August last year, a memorial plaque to Bulgakov was removed from the building of the former First Kyiv Gymnasium, where the future writer studied (now the building houses the Institute of Philology of the Shevchenko National University of Kyiv). Then members of the public organization "Expert Corps" said that this was done at their request. Activists called Bulgakov a "Ukrainophobe" and the memorial plaque a "marker of the Russian occupation." Shortly thereafter, representatives of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine (NSPU) demanded that the Bulgakov Museum in Kyiv be closed. The union's statement claimed that the writer "hated" Ukraine and "defamed" it in his works.
