The renaming of streets in post-revolutionary Ukraine: regional strategies to construct a new national identity

Abstract

After the 2014 revolution, a massive renaming of toponyms related to the communist ideology took place in Ukraine. The results of this renaming help understand the essentiality of Ukrainian delayed post-socialist and post-colonial transition and, in particular, national and regional identities that Ukrainians are going to build, and ideology that local and national authorities are going to impose. This study covers the 36 largest cities in Ukraine with a population of more than 100,000 and focuses on the new street names that appeared as the result of de-communization. It was found that in southeastern Ukraine, the renaming strategy was targeted to avoid the commemorative names, especially those related to military-political events and personalities, as well as to depoliticize urban toponyms, by using non-commemorative categories of street names, like topographical or poetic ones, or restoring the historical toponyms. On the contrary, new toponyms in western and central Ukraine reflect the legacy of the national liberation movements of the 20th century. However, urban toponyms in the most eastern regions, including Donbas, continue to retain close links with the Soviet period. The memory of the Cossack era and Ukrainian Peoples Republic seems to be the well-perceived and common-shared strata of national identity. At the same time, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Soviet legacy remain topics dividing the Ukrainian society. The street renaming process in post-revolutionary Ukraine shares some common characteristics with other post-socialist European countries, such as the appeal to the pre-socialist period in order to reinforce the national identity, replacement of political and military place-names with those related to local and national culture and heritage, and the increased importance of local and regional toponyms.

Geopolitics of geographical urbanonyms: evidence from Ukrainian cities

“…This group should not be confused with so-called location urbanonyms, deriving from important sites, places and objects within the city. In the literature these two groups of urbanonyms (geographical and location) together are treated as "geography urbanonyms" (Stiperski et al 2011;Bucher et al 2013) or "topographical urbanonyms" (Gnatiuk 2018). Geographical urbanonyms may be classified based on the location of the relevant geographical objects, e.g.…”

“…Critical comprehension of these waves of decommunization and accompanying toponymic processes in the literature takes place mainly in the context of the politics of memory in modern Ukraine. In particular, the following aspects are addressed: 1) differences between regional models of a new national identity building (Gnatiuk 2018), 2) spatio-temporal aspects of the urban toponymy transformation (Takhtaulova 2017; Gnatiuk and Melnychuk 2020; Pavlenko 2020), 3) key discourses / approaches to decommunization: "historical nostalgia", "nationalistic" and "decolonization" (Males 2016; Males and Deineka 2020), 4) implementation of memory policy in a specific region or city (Hrytsak 2007;Vengryniuk 2012; Mahrytska 2013; Neher 2014; Fernos 2018; Savchenko and Takhtaulova 2019; Gnatiuk and Melnychuk 2020; Males 2016; Males and Deineka 2020; Kudriavtseva 2020; Pavlenko 2020), 5) influence of the axiological status of a place within a city on the politics of memory (Gnatiuk and Glybovets 2020), 6) legal and organizational features of the decommunization process, principles of choosing new names (Karoyeva 2017), 7) problematic aspects of state toponymic policy (Hyrych 2013). The toponymic space of the city is considered as one of the platforms for the ideology building in contemporary Ukraine, which is realized through social and state mechanisms of consensus and reconciliation (Takhtaulova 2015), as a symbolic capital (Males 2016) and as a spatial projection of the societal axiological system (Gnatiuk and Glybovets 2020).…”

“…At the same time, after 1991, several "local" and "Ukrainian" urbanonyms appeared in the city, many of them as new names for decommunized objects. The last aspect qualitatively distinguishes Dnipro from Kyiv: in the latter preference was given to the commemoration of prominent figures of history and culture, while in Dnipro, as in other cities in the south-east, ideologically neutral toponyms were prioritized (Gnatiuk 2018;Kudriavtseva 2020;Golikov 2020). Several urbanonyms after the cities and countries of Europe appeared during that period in Dnipro as well.…”

Rethinking the toponymic politics in Belarus in the 20–21 centuries: toward the post-colonial perspective

“…For instance, in the case of the largest city in Kazakhstan, Almaty, the post-independence place-naming policies adopted a mix of typical post-colonial toponymic strategies (Shelekpayev, 2017). Recent toponymic transformations in Ukraine as a result of decommunization of landscape can be classified as related to the changes of political regimes, and, at the same time, as the reflected post-colonial and ethnic/nationalistic discourses (Gnatiuk, 2018). In some cases, the authors are talking about the Ukrainian toponyms as an example of "linguistic colonization" or even "occupation" (Demska, 2016, p. 607).…”

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.…”