Do street status and centrality matter for post-socialist memory policy? The experience of Ukrainian cities

Abstract

Naming and renaming of urban space often is sensitive in terms of the street location and status and implies categorization of streets according to the perceived importance of a street name. Thus, different locations in the city have different symbolic significance, and the urban toponymy could be read as a spatial projection of the societal axiological system. This article represents an attempt to study the importance of location (centrality vs. peripherality) and status (significance) of the urban public spaces in the 36 largest Ukrainian cities in terms of symbolical value and memory policy. The findings indicate that both investigated factors constitute an important tool of identity shaping and historical memory policy, but their influence and manifestation may vary considerably depending on specific historical, cultural and (geo)political conditions. Therefore, although the central parts of cities and the main urban arteries have tangibly larger symbolic significance, the toponymy of less presentable urban areas may be no less eloquent in the critical toponymy studies.

Transformations of place, memory and identity through urban place names in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

“…The members of the committee agreed to bring old, locally used names back to the city centre and in particular cases to introduce new commemorative names. At the same time they proposed to use preferably non-commemorative names with a long(er)-term validity in the neighbourhoods further outside the city centre, 3 which is in line with the observations of Gnatiuk, O. and Glybovets, V. (2020).…”

Case Study of De-Russification of Ukrainian Hodonyms

“…1. "city-text" where political regimes inscribe own values and authorized version of history (see also Gnatiuk & Glybovets 2020;Šakaja & Stanić 2017;Azaryahu 2012;Azaryahu 2011;Palonen 2008;Light 2004) 2. "cultural arena" where the politics of recognition are played out across the fault lines of race, gender, and class (see also Alderman & Inwood 2013;Alderman 2002;Dwyer & Alderman 2008;Rose-Redwood 2008a;Berg & Kearns 1996), and 3.…”

Place names as a political instrument in the post-Soviet realm: introduction

“…In recent years, the post-Soviet realm has been an object of the growing number of political toponymic studies based on a wide range of the theoretical perspectives and conducted in English on the examples of various countries of the region both by the Western (Anglophone) authors and some of the post-Soviet researchers (see, for example, Murray, 2000;Saparov, 2003Saparov, , 2017Gill, 2005;Horsman, 2006;Dabaghyan, 2011;Balode, 2012;Marin, 2012;Yanushkevich, 2014;Manucharyan, 2015;Kangaspuro, Lassila, 2017;Light, Young, 2017;Shelekpayev, 2017;Malikov, 2018;Gnatiuk, 2018;Basik, Rahautsou, 2019;Kaşikçi, 2019;Gnatiuk, Glybovets, 2020;Dala Costa, 2020;Kudriavtseva, 2020). The region serves a model hotspot of geopolitical transformations in the 20-21 centuries with the different examples of, first of all, hegemonic toponymic practices ranging from erasing and cleansing to restoration, memorialization, and even promotional branding.…”