KYIV, Ukraine — On the streets of Kyiv, Fyodor Dostoevsky is on the way out. Andy Warhol is just a few steps away.
Ukraine is intensifying efforts to eradicate the remnants of Soviet and Russian Influence from It public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others — including heroes of this year’s war.
Following Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummeled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine’s leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its Communist past In one “de-Russification.”
Many streets which honored Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution had been destroyed; Russia now is the enemy.
It’s part punishment for crimes meted out by Russia, and part affirmation of a national identity by honoring Ukrainian notables who have been mostly overlooked.
Russia is often seen through the Soviet Union. Ukraine As if it had imposed its dominance on its small southwestern neighbour for many generations, its poets, artists and military heroes were left in relative anonymity, as compared to the more well-known Russians.
If victors write history, as some say, Ukrainians are doing some rewriting of their own — even as their fate hangs in the balance. The Ukrainian national identity may experience an unimaginable surge of popularity, large and small.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Russia, has adopted a T-shirt in black that reads: “I’m Ukrainian.”
He’s one of the many Ukrainians born to speak Ukrainian Russian As a second language. Now, they shun it — or at least limit their use of it. Ukrainian has traditionally been spoken more in the western part of the country — a region that early on shunned Russian Soviet imagery.
Large areas of central, northern and eastern parts Ukraine They are making this linguistic transition. The eastern city of Dnipro on Friday pulled down a bust of Alexander Pushkin — like Dostoevsky, a giant of 19th century Russian literature. The strap from a crane was unceremoniously looped under the statue’s chin.
Vitali Klitschko (Kyiv Mayor) announced this month that about 30 streets more in the capital would be rechristened.
Volodymyr PROCOPIV, the vice-head of Kyiv’s City Council said Ukraine’s “de-Communization” Since 2015, policy has been in force. “soft” way so as not to offend sensitivities among the country’s RussianMany people are pro-Moscow, even those who speak English.
“With the war, everything changed. Now the Russian lobby is now powerless – in fact, it doesn’t exist,” Prokopiv said in an interview with The Associated Press in his office overlooking Khreschatik Street, the capital’s main thoroughfare. “Renaming these streets is like erasing the propaganda that the Soviet Union imposed on Ukraine.”
Russians sought also to establish their culture and dominance in the areas that they occupied during World War II.
Andrew Wilson from University College London cautioned against “the dangers in rewriting the periods in history where Ukrainians and Russians did cooperate and build things together: I think the whole point about de-imperializing Russian culture should be to specify where we have previously been blind — often in the West.”
Wilson observed that Ukrainians are a very different people to Americans. “are taking a pretty broad-brush approach.”
Pushkin from the 19th Century was cited by he. Russian Ukrainians might find it irritating to read the words of a writer.
To them, for example, the Cossacks — a Slavic people in eastern Europe — “mean freedom, whereas Pushkin depicts them as cruel, barbarous, antiquated. And in need of Russian civilization,” Wilson’s book, “The Book of Wilson”, is Wilson’s reply. “The Ukrainians” The fifth edition was just published.
Prokopiv stated that Kyiv completed an online survey and got 280,000 responses in one day. After that, an expert team sorted through all the answers and gave their final approval.
The following are the guidelines “de-Communization” About 200 streets in Kyiv were renamed before the year ended. Prokopiv indicated that this same number has already been renamed, and more than 100 will soon be, in 2022.
Bohdan Ihor Antonych will have a street named after Friedrich Engels. Boulevard named after Friedrich Engels. “Friendship of Peoples” — an allusion to the diverse ethnicities under the USSR – will honor Mykola Mikhnovsky, an early proponent of Ukrainian independence.
The street also recognizes it “Heroes of Mariupol” — fighters who held out for months against a devastating Russian Campaign in the Sea of Azov port town that fell. Street named after the Russian city of Volgograd is now called Roman Ratushnyi Street in honor of a 24-year-old civic and environmental activist who was killed in the war.
A small street in northern Kyiv still bears Dostoevsky’s name but soon will be named for Warhol, the late Pop Art visionary from Americans whose family roots are in Slovakia were ancestors to the United States. Ukraine’s western border.
Valeriy Sholomitsky has been living on Dostoevsky Street almost 40 years and said that he would consider moving either direction.
“We have under 20 houses here. That’s very few,” Sholomitsky said this as he shoveled snow onto the streets in front of an aging address sign that bore the name the Russian writer. Warhol, he said, was “our artist” — with heritage in eastern Europe:
Now, “it will be even better,” He stated.
“Maybe it is right that we are changing many streets now, because we used to name them incorrectly,” He concluded.
