Tea at Trianon: Memorial to Austrian Prince Vasyl Vyshyvany inaugurated in Kyiv

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Memorial to Austrian Prince Vasyl Vyshyvany inaugurated in Kyiv

From Euromaidan Press:

A bust of Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg-Lothringen (Vasyl Vyshyvany), colonel of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (Sichovi Striltsi) and the UNR Army, politician, diplomat, poet and dreamer, was unveiled in Kyiv on May 20, 2021 (Vyshyvanka Day). It is located on Vasyl Vyshyvany Square, 39 Illienka Street (Lukyanivska metro station).
Slowly but surely, Kyiv’s landscape is changing. A bust of Colonel Petro Bolbochan, colonel of the UNR Army, recently replaced a memorial to Stalin’s henchman Stanislav Kosior. Today, a monument to Wilhelm von Habsburg has been erected on Illienka Street, which recently bore the name of another communist criminal,” wrote journalist Rostyslav Martynyuk on his Facebook page.
The ceremony was attended by public activists, government officials, Ukrainian MPs, representatives of the Austrian Embassy, the brass band of the Heroes of Kruty Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information, the National Guard of Ukraine, and many others.

The monument to Vasyl Vyshyvany was erected not far from the Lukyanivska Prison, where he was transported in 1948 by NKVD officers after being abducted from Vienna. He was tortured in the same prison, and his body was secretly buried somewhere nearby. (Read more.)