In 1991, Ukraine was left with tens of thousands of streets named after Soviet party officials and Russian colonists. But it took until the 2014 Revolution of Dignity to accelerate the process as part of the country’s “de-communization” campaign.
And yet while the effect has been enormous, there are problems. Changing names is not simply a matter of confusion (where residents continue to use the old names) but also a question of priorities during wartime, along with the expense and who exactly gets to make the decision. Military administrators empowered to pursue the campaign in places including Odesa have created enormous public spats with local officials.
From 2014 to 2021, more than 51,000 toponymic objects (streets, factories, etc.) were renamed, along with 991 settlements, while about 2,500 monuments and memorials linked to the totalitarian communist regime were dismantled.
Before the 2022 full-scale invasion, such rebranding was received mostly positively, even though some people kept using the old names out of habit. The changes mostly touched place names imposed by the Soviet regime.
Removing multiple Vladimir Lenin avenues or Felix Dzerzhinsky (the notorious creator of the Soviet NKVD) streets, and replacing them to honor Ukrainian soldiers and artists was a crucial element of the politics of memory and an important step toward decolonization.
After 2022, renaming skyrocketed but also became increasingly contentious. Last year, a law “On the Condemnation and Prohibition of Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy in Ukraine and the Decolonization of Toponymy” was accepted, unleashing a wave of chaotic renaming.
The process no longer took account of the opinions of local residents or elected city councils, instead, it was often a non-negotiable decision by unelected military administrators.
In Odesa, for example, a decision to rename 85 streets deeply divided the city. The Odesa Military Administration ordered the renaming of Isaac Babel Street, as well as a number of others connected to Odesa-born academics, such as anatomy researcher Vladimir Vorobiov, and writers who had lived and written in the city in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Konstantin Paustovsky and Ivan Bunin.
A port in the south of Ukraine, Odesa was the fourth largest city of the Russian Empire. Highly cosmopolitan, it was home to a substantial Jewish diaspora and drew creative artists from all over the Empire.
Isaac Babel was arguably the most influential writer in the city’s history. Born in Odesa to a Jewish family, Babel’s Odesa Stories described the city during the political turmoil of 1904-19. The stories were taught in schools and widely read, and it is hard to find people in the city who have not heard of him. (The authorities may be less keen on Red Cavalry, Babel’s account of fighting with the Bolsheviks against the Poles.)
The heroes of his stories are primarily Jewish, and Babel himself was tortured and murdered during Stalin’s purges in 1939. It was therefore unsurprising that the decision to rename a street honoring him was a trigger for fierce controversy.
The city was also divided by the dismantling of a monument to Russian poet Alexandr Pushkin, which was erected in 1889 by public subscription after he spent a year in the city. Discussions about removing the statue had been continuing since 2014, sparking hot debates among locals long before the decision was made this year.
Odesa City Mayor Gennady Trukhanov sent an open appeal to UNESCO, signed by 150 cultural and political figures from different countries, asking for help to “defer the ill-timed decisions about Odesa’s cultural heritage until the end of the war when public consultations can take place.”
Amid Russia’s destruction of Ukraine, the forced name changes and removal of statues “strikes out against Odesa’s cultural memory and its legendary identity as a haven of cosmopolitan freedom,” the letter said. Odesa’s city center is under UNESCO protection, and dismantling monuments goes against the global cultural body’s principles, it added.
There are also complaints about the cost of the process. Millions of euros that could be used on other things are being spent on putting up new signs and changing documents containing old names.
While it is a noble aim to free Ukraine from Russian colonial influence and replace Moscow’s heroes with Ukrainians, the regulations fail to take account of local history and the preferences of those who live and walk the affected streets.
Decisions dictated by military administrations have the effect of polarizing people and handing ammunition to Russian propagandists. The example of Odesa was seized on by mouthpieces for the Kremlin and circulated to their readers as an illustration of Ukrainian injustice.
Delegating decisions to elected city councils and holding public hearings are crucial steps to avoid discrediting genuine decolonization by transforming it into a witch hunt against people who were important for local history, but were born at the wrong time.
Mykyta Vorobiov is a Ukrainian political adviser, journalist, and political science student at Bard College Berlin. For the last two years, he has been developing articles on politics and law for CEPA, VoxEurop, JURIST, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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