Original Article 119 The renaming of streets in post-revolutionary Ukraine: regional strategies to construct a new national identity Oleksiy Gnatiuk Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine * Corresponding author:
[email protected] ABSTRACT After the 2014 revolution, a massive renaming of toponyms related to the communist ideology took place in Ukraine. The results of this renaming help understand the essentiality of Ukrainian delayed post-socialist and post-colonial transition and, in particular, national and regional identities that Ukrainians are going to build, and ideology that local and national authorities are going to impose. This study covers the 36 largest cities in Ukraine with a population of more than 100,000 and focuses on the new street names that appeared as the result of de-communization. It was found that in south-eastern Ukraine, the renaming strategy was targeted to avoid the commemorative names, especially those related to military-political events and personalities, as well as to depoliticize urban toponyms, by using non-commemorative categories of street names, like topographical or poetic ones, or restor- ing the historical toponyms. On the contrary, new toponyms in western and central Ukraine reflect the legacy of the national liber- ation movements of the 20th century. However, urban toponyms in the most eastern regions, including Donbas, continue to retain close links with the Soviet period. The memory of the Cossack era and Ukrainian Peoples Republic seems to be the well-perceived and common-shared strata of national identity. At the same time, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Soviet legacy remain topics dividing the Ukrainian society.