Today at 00:08
Public decommunization in Ukraine began during the Euromaidan Revolution. On December 8th, 2013, a monument to Vladimir Lenin on the Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv was demolished. Protesters smashed the statue – a symbol of the totalitarian Soviet epoch.
Similar Communist symbols were demolished or removed across the country.
Later, in April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the law on decommunization.
“On Maundy Thursday, we clean the Communist infection and plague. Thank you for your support. I congratulate us all on accepting this important, historical decision,” Chairman of Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy said.
During the first year of decommunization, the Verkhovna Rada adopted 13 decrees, renaming 987 settlements and 25 districts – in
total – just over a thousand placenames.
More than 300 historical names were restored. Around 70 of them belong to the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples and national communities of Ukraine – Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, and others. In Crimea, five districts, one town, and 69 villages were renamed. Most of it was a restoration of historical place names, which were erased from the map by the Stalinist regime after the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944.
In the temporarily occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the parliament renamed 74 cities, towns, districts, and villages.
“The war which is happening now is not so much about the territory but about the Ukrainian identity. Decommunisation in this context was extremely important – because the traces of the Communist, totalitarian past were leaving the Ukrainian consciousness,” Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Vyatrovych said.
In Kyiv, every tenth street was renamed and over 50 objects were removed – memorial signs, five-pointed Red Stars, and emblems of the Soviet Union.
“We are near the house where the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen barracks were at the end of 1917 and beginning of 1918. It was one of the most combat-ready, disciplined and invincible units of the Ukrainian People’s Republic army,” Historian, Coordinator of the Project Likbez-Historical Front Kyrylo Halushko said, speaking of Sich Riflemen Street in Kyiv, the first street to be renamed after decommunization.
Whereas previously the name of the street was Artem Sergeev, now it is directly connected to Ukrainian history.
“Artem is not for this place and this town. He is one of the Soviet-era propaganda symbols, and Sich Riflemen were there. They went down this street to suppress the Bolshevik uprising at the Arsenal Plant,” Halusko said.
Halushko said that he is glad that his children can see Ukrainian history.
“You don’t need to drag all the past along, because sometimes it is hard to move forward when you have lots of skeletons in your closet – that you cannot explain to anyone,” Halushko said. “For me, the surroundings and the streets my children and grandchildren will walk, are important.”
Decommunization in Ukraine is continuing. In the near future, Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region could be changed to Sicheslav. Meanwhile, a street in Kyiv which used to be named after Soviet intelligence officer Ivan Kudria, was renamed in honor of American senator and friend of Ukraine, John McCain.
Representatives of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance say that decommunization has to be followed by decolonization, which should destroy the traces of the country’s totalitarian imperial past.
