Away from Ukraine's eastern front, where the fighting is taking place, a new struggle is taking place - not from the trenches, but on green side streets and major highways. There the enemy goes by the name of Pavlov. Or Tchaikovsky. Or Catherine the Great.
Across Ukraine, officials are launching projects for the so-called "decolonization" of their cities.
According to a New York Times article, streets and subway stops whose names allude to the history of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union are being targeted by Ukrainians who want to rid themselves of any trace of the nation that invaded their country on February 24.
"We are defending our country, even at the forefront of culture," said Andriy Moskalenko, deputy mayor of Lviv and head of a committee that examined the names on each of the city's more than 1,000 streets. "And we don't want to have anything in common with the killers," he said."
Ukraine is not the first country to undertake such a project - the United States has been struggling for decades with the fate of some Civil War-era monuments.
Nor is this the first time Ukraine has made such an effort: after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was one of many Eastern European countries that renamed streets and removed statues reminiscent of the era of communist rule, which became synonymous with totalitarianism.
This time, the decision to delete Russian names does not just symbolize contempt for the invasion and Soviet history, Vasil Kmet, a historian at Lviv's Ivan Franko National University, said, adding: "It is also a reaffirmation of a Ukrainian identity that many believe has been suppressed under centuries of domination by its most powerful neighbour. The concept of decolonization is a bit broader, he noted.
"Russian policy today is based on the propaganda of the so-called Russky mir - the Russophone world. It is about creating a strong alternative, a modern Ukrainian national discourse," the historian explained.
Lviv is one of the many regions undertaking "decolonization" campaigns. So is the northwestern city of Lutsk, which plans to rename more than 100 streets. In the southern port city of Odessa, whose residents are mostly Russian-speaking, politicians are debating whether to remove a monument to Catherine the Great, the Russian empress who founded the city in 1794.
In the capital Kiev, the city council is considering renaming the Leon Tolstoy metro stop after Vasil Stus, a Ukrainian poet and dissident.
The "Minsk" stop, named after the Belarusian capital, which stood by Moscow during the invasion, may soon be renamed "Warsaw" in honor of Poland's support for Ukraine.
And it's not just Russian names that are being scrutinized. The Lviv committee also plans to delete street names given in tribute to Ukrainians. One was named after the writer Petro Kozlaniuk, who worked with Soviet security services, including the KGB.
Removing the names of some cultural symbols - something the Lviv committee said it did after consulting with academics from relevant fields - has proved more divisive. The history of figures like Pyotr Tchaikovsky can be difficult: The classical composer's family roots are in modern Ukraine, and some musicologists say his works were inspired by Ukrainian folk music.
A few miles from Lviv, Viktor Melnychuk has a factory preparing to build new signs for renamed roads. Although he acknowledges he has a business interest in any change, he is ambivalent about some of the new names. "Maybe we should keep some classic authors or poets if they're from other periods. I'm not sure," he said, adding: "We can't dismiss everything completely. There was something good there."
He, however, plans to align himself with the committee's decisions. And the decision was unanimous: Tchaikovsky will go.
"When we rename a street, it doesn't mean we say: This person didn't make this invention or it wasn't important," said Mr. Moskalenko, deputy mayor of Lviv. "It means that this person's work has been used as a tool of colonization."
Historian Vasyl Kmet saw an opportunity to honor some Ukrainians whose contributions have been lost in the depths of history.
He hopes to name a street in Lviv after a librarian, Fedir Maksimenko, who secretly protected Ukrainian culture and books during the Soviet era. "I and Ukrainian culture owe a lot to him," he said, adding: "We have to work very hard today to preserve what he saved."
Source: in.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
