Decolonization Results: Successful or Not?

April 27 marks a new stage of clearing the public space from Russian imperial names under the law on decolonization. Now, it is the turn of regional state administrations (currently regional military administrations). The Transparent Cities program studied how the derussification of Ukrainian streets was carried out at the local level.

Program experts sent requests to 83 municipalities—80 cities of the adapted study of city transparency and 3 city military administrations (Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk, and Kherson city military administrations), whose decolonization experience the program studied in previous years. This includes 23 oblasts of Ukraine, which the study covered in the period from July 27, 2023, to January 27, 2024. 

• The five cities where the highest number of toponyms were changed from July 2023 to January 2024 included Kryvyi Rih (268), Dnipro (198), Pokrovsk (159), Kherson (85), and Zaporizhzhia (81). 
• The fewest toponyms were renamed in Lviv, Novovolynsk, Fastiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Vinnytsia. This is partly because the processes of decommunization and derussification in the cities in the west took place gradually after the restoration of Ukrainian statehood, and not only after 2014. In Fastiv and Vinnytsia, a significant number of toponyms were renamed in 2022, and the latter even announced that it had completed derussification.
• 39 city councils renamed almost 1,500 toponyms from July 27, 2023, to January 27, 2024.
• At least as many toponyms had to be changed by April 27. In some cases, new names had already been discussed, and in others, the toponymic commission only determined their number and required further discussion with the public.
• In cities, not only the names of streets, squares, lanes, avenues, or boulevards were changed. A new name was given to parks, metro stations, districts, libraries, a memorial complex, a railway station, etc.

“The deadlines for decolonization provided for by the law are expiring. The space around us is finally getting rid of the toponyms that have nothing to do with Ukraine but often symbolize its enemies. Unfortunately, this was not an easy process: both local authorities and some residents showed resistance. But we have a result that can be welcomed; what we also need is to encourage the parties to bring the matter to an end,” said Viktoria Onyshchenko, an analyst at the Transparent Cities program.

Among the issues that prevented the timely change of toponym names, the city councils mentioned:

•  search for new names or discussion of certain options;
• rejection by a part of the population of the importance of renaming toponyms because “it is irrelevant,” and sometimes even calls for the authorities to suspend this process (in Konotop, residents sent a collective appeal to ban the renaming of streets and alleys in the city);
• high level of criticism by the population of this process and at the same time low engagement in coming up with new names (for example, Lozova criticized the process of renaming, but only 23 appeals with proposals were received);
• criticism about the need to change all title documents after renaming streets, alleys (in fact, this is not the case, read more in our material);
• waiting for clarifications from specialized institutions on whether the name is subject to the law on the derussification of toponymy;
• tendency of residents to depersonalize names, such as assigning new neutral names (Kvitkova (Flower Street), Chepurna (Neat Street), Yaskrava (Bright Street)).

Therefore, on April 27, some cities will complete the process of renaming toponyms, and the rest will transfer this task to other levels of government. The Transparent Cities program is already studying how successful decolonization, which lasted more than 2 years, has been and will soon present more comprehensive results of its research.