Does Kyiv need further decolonization and derusification of urban intellectual space?

Abstract

The article deals with the actual question of building the cultural landscape of Kyiv through the toponymic renewal of its spatial components. The author refers to the experience of other countries of Eastern Europe, in particular Poland, to analyse the process of renaming the streets and squares of the capital of Ukraine. He evaluates what has been done to change the place names of Kyiv in recent times. At the same time, the article demonstrates how incomplete and unsystematic the renaming process in Kyiv was. The author points out to the preservation of the Soviet-nostalgic discourse in the name of the streets and squares of the city. Attention is focused on such issues as perpetuating the names of public, political, and educational figures, whose activities contributed to the design of the so called “Ukrainian” Kyiv at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. There were especially the representatives of socio-political movement in the second half of 19th century and people who distinguished themselves in the period of national-liberation struggle. It is proved, that a meaningful sense of urban place names form the basis of symbolic cultural landscape of Kyiv. It promotes the designation of “places of memory” in the city and accelerates the processes of decolonization and de-communization of its intellectual space.