When Ukranian president Viktor Yuschenko visited Washington last week, there couldn't have been much doubt as to whether he would mention the statue at 22nd and P streets NW. Of course he would. And so he did at before a joint session of Congress: "In your city, there is a monument to the father of the Ukrainian nation, the great poet Taras Shevchenko, whose prophecy of the emergence of Ukraine of its own Washington, with a new and righteous law as enshrined on this pedestal. These verses have a profound and special meaning for all Ukrainians. Shevchenko was inspired by the invincible power of the words, 'that God has bestowed each man on Earth with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' This shared conviction determines the unity of Americans and Ukrainians and no distances can obstruct that."

And it was obvious not only because Shevchenko is such a towering figure in Ukraine, but because it was announced a week before Yuschenko arrived that he would also pay the monument a visit. In fact, the statue has always been one of the higher-profile lesser-known monuments. This surely owes to its striking location, at the center of a large handkerchief park two blocks west of Dupont Circle, next to the Church of the Pilgrims above Rock Creek. The statue also reaches quite high, made all the taller by the granite base he stands upon.

And because his physical prominence in this city outshines his celebrity in this country, many have got to be wondering: Who the heck was this guy?

Taras Shevchenko sounds like a character from a Dickens book, say, Philip Pirrip meets Oliver Twist: He came from an educated, literate family of serfs, and was orphaned as a young child in Russian-controlled Ukraine. He served as a houseboy on the estate of Baron Vasili Engelhardt through his mid-twenties.

In Shevchenko's 26th year, his freedom was bought for him by the (then-influential, now-forgotten) poet Vasily Zhukovsky, then at the height of his renown. Shevchenko's luck owed in part to his talent for painting, which allowed him to study under Karl Bruillov, painter of The Last Day of Pompeii. Several times during his apprenticeship, Shevchenko won distinction from the Imperial Academy of Arts.

But he also possessed a precocious talent for writing. In 1841 he published an epic poem, and in short order established himself as a promising dramatist as well. Having lived in royal St. Petersburg for most of his adult life, he returned to Ukraine in 1845. Once there he soon became acquainted with other young thinkers, including the historian Mykola Kostomarov. Together with like-minded Ukrainian intellectuals, they founded a secret political organization called the Kyrylo-Methodius Society. They stood for the unification and equality of Slavic nations and the abolition of serfdom, and believed this could be achieved through education without violence. For this they were labeled subsversives.

Shevchenko was arrested and eventually exiled to the east -- which actually sounds more like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov -- except we look back and see no crime, only punishment. A dozen years later he was released, permitted to return to Kiev, had that allowance reneged upon, and spent his declining years back in St. Petersburg. There he painted and wrote, honing his theories and arguments for freedom, living in an attic at the Academy. His hard life had worn him down, and in March 1861 he succumbed to a severe illness. It was one day after his birthday -- and seven days before Alexander II announced the Emancipation of Serfs.

As the New Jersey-based Ukrainian Weekly wrote in 2002, Shevchenko combined "elements of Washington, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dante and Martin Luther King."

More than a half-century after his death, Shevchenko was adopted as a hero by the Soviets, but didn't hurt his reputation among Ukrainians. In 1939 Kyiv (Kiev) University was renamed for Shevchenko; though the Soviets have left the scene, the name remains. Nor did the association damage his international profile so badly as to prevent a statue of him from being built right here in the District -- at the height of the Cold War, no less. New York Sen. Jacob Javits spoke out in support of the statue's creation in 1960: "Taras Shevchenko was a bard of freedom. ... It was Shevchenko's poetry that encouraged the Ukrainians, forced within the Soviet Union, to continue their struggles for freedom and in World War II encouraged and fostered the Ukrainian opposition to both fascism and communism. It is only fitting that the statue of such a national hero, who taught the American ideals of patriotism and service to man, should stand in the capital of the United States."

A well-regarded Ukrainian-Canadian sculptor, Leo Mol, was chosen to create both the gigantic bronze statue and the bas relief of Prometheus (bound) that stands just behind young Taras. The project took two years to complete, and in June 1964 it was unveiled to huge crowds: an estimated 35,000 were said to have marched in the parade beforehand, with some 100,000 pouring to D.C. for the occasion. Also in attendance was the former President Dwight Eisenhower, whom you can sort of make out in the picture at right.

As for Mol, though he was already a success before creating our Shevchenko, his star rose internationally with the attention he got from this work. In fact, soon after he won competitions to create two more Shevchenko statues for placement in Buenos Aires and in Prudentopolis, Brazil.

Ukraine, of course, remained itself bound to the Soviet Union until the empire's dissolution in the early 1990s. Ukraine has had a rocky time since then, culminating in the crisis late last year and climactic events of the past few months that came to be known as the Orange Revolution. Coinciding with the similarly promising elections in Iraq, it's hard not to think that Ukraine's return to political freedom will have an effect -- indeed is already having an effect -- on the spread of freedom.

Perhaps you'll still remember Shevchenko best as the big guy on the pedestal outside the Brickskeller, but as a bard of freedom, he's still relevant.

(Top photo from DCist; Center image from FurCafe's Flickr photostream; 1964 photo via ArtUkraine.com.)