Ukrainian authorities have been dealing with the issue of decommunization of the society for a long time: they started with the court process to ban the Communistic Party of Ukraine, then they added the 8th of May – Remembrance and Reconciliation Day to the list of holidays (besides that, the Victory over Nazism in Europe and in the Second World War Day is celebrated on May 9), and last week the Verkhovna Rada voted for a draft law on condemnation of the communist and national socialistic totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and ban of propaganda of their symbols. One paragraph of the draft law implies renaming all towns and villages that have soviet names.
Recently, the list of settlements was published. It is made of 42 toponyms, 25 of which are towns (similar to the ones that were due to be renamed under Viktor Yushchenko) and 17 urban-type settlements. It’s worth to be mentioned that even settlements that are under control of the Russian occupational authorities in Crimea and armed gangs (in the east of Ukraine) are in the list.
How will they be renamed?
There is Dnepropetrovsk among big cities. It is offered to rename it as New Kodak or Sicheslav and call the region the Sicheslavsk region.
At the beginning of the 18th century, Dnepropetrovsk was called Ekaterinoslav. It is still unknown who the city was named after – either the empress or celestial patroness the Great Martyr Ekaterina. Later on, the city changed its name for Novorossiysk and some years later started to be called Ekaterinoslav again. Presumably, the city started to be called Sicheslav in 1919, although it is not known for certain. It is said that the name of the terrain was invented by a historian of the Zaporozhian Kozakdom Dmitry Yavornitsky. The particle “Slav” in the name stands for praise and as it was not comme il faut to praise Catherine at that period of time, they recalled about the Zaporozhian Sich. Dnepropetrovsk is offered to be called as New Kodak after a Polish fortress Kodak that was brought up already in the 17th century.
One of the settlements in the Donetsk region can change its name for a German one. Urban-type settlement Telmanovo located 60 km away from presently occupied Donetsk is named after a German communist Ernst Telman. The settlement was founded as a place of compact residence of Germans in 1897 and has been called Ostheim until 1935. This is actually how they want to call it now.
The city Kirovograd in the central part of Ukraine will gain a new name – Elisabethgrad after the name of a fortress of St. Elisabeth, the empress Elizabeth of New Serbia (the western part of Zaporizhia). The city was called Elisabethgrad from 1752 till 1924, then it was called Zinovievsk (after a soviet public figure Gregory Zinoviev) for 10 years and since 1934 it was called Kirovograd after assassination of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks member Sergey Kostrikov (Kirov), who hasn’t had anything to do with the region, moreover, has never been there.
The renamed settlement Lenino on the Kerch peninsula will have the most interesting name. Its initial name is Sem Kolodezey (Seven wells). The matter is that until recently (at the beginning of the 20th century) there were big problems with water in the area, it was tapped with great efforts. However, sources of good fresh water were found just here after long searches. That’s where the name of the terrain originates.
