Decommunization of the Capital: Changes in Urbanonymy (Methods and the First Results)

Abstract

In the article on the material of urbanonymy of Kiev is demonstrated changes in creating and using of a symbolic space for the approval of the state ideology. It is demonstrated that today the creation and modification urbanonymy are not spontaneously, but by community initiatives and administrative means. During decommunization process the special issues is a Internet discussion and voting for the renaming of the urbanonymies of Kyiv. During decommunization process mostly urbanonyms are made from artist’, scientist’, military commander’ names. Thus new heroes are glorified in the names of streets. A few of new street-names are derived from local place-names. This is like a modern strategy of «back to basics» and «Pantheon of heroes». Almost every fifth (and in some locals more than a half) of all new urbanonyms of Kyiv are so called lyric. This results in a changing informative and identifying the functions of urbanonymy and its ideological function.