Renaming Kyiv’s Streets Amid the Russian War of Invasion: The Politics of History Between “Decommunization” and “Derussification”

Abstract

The article undertakes a comparative thematic and narrative analysis of the trends in place name change in Kyiv (as published by the Kyiv City State Administration) during two periods: (1) between 2014 and the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 and (2) between 24 February 2022 and the first anniversary of the Russian invasion in 2023. From 2014 to early 2023, 517 (about 17 percent) of Kyiv’s urbanonyms were changed. It is found that 58 percent of names changed during this entire time span belonged to the “Soviet nostalgic” narrative and 41 percent — to the narrative of the “Russian world”, while 1 percent were non-political. Before 24 February 2022, the “Soviet nostalgic” narrative was affected the most (88 percent of renamings), which reflects the phenomenon of “decommunization”; however, during the full-scale Russian invasion its share fell to 30 percent. In the period after 24 February 2022, the theme of “derussification” clearly dominated, with the share of removed names that represented the “Russian world” narrative increasing from 11 percent (before the full-scale invasion) to 69 percent. The largest proportion of newly minted toponyms in the period from 2014 to 2023 embody the “national Ukrainian” narrative (59 percent), while 35 percent invoke a “non-political” context and 6 percent are internationally-themed. The ongoing urbanonymic change, as analyzed in the article using Kyiv as a case study, has led to a radical transformation of the urban symbolic order in Ukraine. Ukraine is appropriating these spaces, displacing the Russian imperial legacy. The radicalization of this policy is a result of the Russian aggression; however, it reinforces an already existing trend. It is also an act of defiance, doing the opposite of what the aggressor may have planned or would have done, had Kyiv been captured. Thus the sad but stubborn irony is that the attempt to reintegrate Ukraine into the Russian imperial order has produced the exact opposite outcome — a fundamental rejection of the symbols of the “Russian world”.