chapotraphouse

In 2008, Ukraine aired a television polling program called The Greatest Ukrainians and the winner of the poll turned out to be Yaroslav the Wise.

However, it was later revealed that the result had been manupulated as the actual winner was Stepan Bandera:

The Chief of Great Ukrainians project, journalist Vakhtang Kipiani, informed the public in his blog, that the voting system had been manipulated by unknown persons. He stated that a couple of days prior to publishing the results he was aware of a possible win for Yaroslav the Wise. Prior to that, with a huge lead in first place was the controversial Stepan Bandera. For example, the winner, Yaroslav I, received 60,000 votes in one month and almost 550,000 in just one day. Mykola Amosov, who took second place, received almost 150,000 votes in just one day. Kipiani said that if these manipulation hadn't taken place Yaroslav would not have won.

Very interestingly, also in the same year, Russia aired a similar television program called The Name of Russia and the winner was Alexander Nevsky.

It was also exposed that the polling result was rigged as the actual winner was Joseph Stalin:

In his book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, author Peter Pomerantsev (working as a consultant for the Russian television industry at the time) claims the actual winner of the contest was Joseph Stalin, rather than Alexander Nevsky, and that the "embarrassed" producers had to rig the vote in favor of Nevsky.

Absolutely amazing. Bandera and Stalin occupied the hearts of the Ukrainian and Russian people and continued to fight it out in the 21st century, and the respective governments had to bury their popularity and prop up medieval historical figures to keep things calm.