Paul Goble
Vienna, May
22 – Most discussions on replacing Soviet-era names of cities and
streets with pre-revolutionary ones have focused on the ideological
acceptability of Communist names in post-Soviet Russia, on the costs
involved of making such changes, and on the confusion it introduces in
the minds of some Russians.
But a new discussion now taking place
in Irkutsk on the border of Siberia and the Russian Far East suggests
that the process of renaming may point to some deeper tectonic shifts,
changes that will redefine how people in various parts of the Russian
Federation view their country and their relationship to it.
In
Irkutsk, the authorities are planning to rename 16 streets and two city
squares, replacing Soviet-era names with pre-revolutionary ones and
setting up “information stands” in each case to provide information
about the names being dropped and the names being restored to lessen
the “shock” local people may experience as a result.
As part of
this process, “Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda” reported yesterday,
officials are paying close attention to the meaning of these changes.
Aleksandr Dulov, the head of the city’s toponymy commission, told the
paper that “at the start of the 20th century, of the city’s 185
streets, 93 percent stressed the particular features of Irkutsk.”
The city’s streets at that time featured the names of the original
settlers and merchants and “thus reflected the realities of history,
nature and productive activity” of Irkutsk, he said. But now as a
result of the homogenization of names in Soviet times, “of the city’s
700 streets, only 30 percent” have regionally specific names
(www.vsp.ru/social/2009/05/21/462739).
Prior to 1920, Dulov said,
38 percent of the streets were named for merchants. Now, none are. But
the number of streets named for political figures has increased from
two to 11 percent, those named for military figures from zero to eight
percent, and streets named after ideological concepts from zero to 12
percent.
In short, the “political” names in the broadest sense
increased from 1920 to 1991 from two percent to 31 percent, the
onomastician said. And he argued that the city’s plan to restore
pre-revolutionary names will give the city back its own face, a matter
in the words of the newspaper of simple “justice.”
There had long
been a Bolshaya street in Irkutsk until t became Karl Marx Street, and
now it will become Bolshaya again. Lenin Street will become Amur
Street, Dzerzhinsky Arsenal, Kirov Square will again become Speransky
Square, and so on. But there won’t be a blanket ban on any name – and
several places in the city will continue to bear Kirov’s name.
Nor
will this measure be introduced “Bolshevik-style,” official say.
Svetlana Dombrovskaya, who heads the city’s administration for culture,
announced that the changes will take place in stages. First of all,
signs with the new-old names will be put up alongside those with
current ones, and only later will the current ones be taken down.
Once the new names are introduced – and Irkutsk officials told the
newspaper that they would launch a major pr campaign to explain what
was happening – the people of that city are likely to find themselves
reminded more of what sets their city and region apart from the rest of
the country rather and less about what unites it with all other regions.
On the one hand, that may contribute to the further de-politicization
of names and the identities they supported in the past. But on the
other, it may reinforce or even power the rise of regional identities
like “Sibiryak” or “Uralets” that the Soviet system worked so hard to
undermine in the promotion of national ones.
And consequently, a
step which may seem small in and of itself, the renaming of streets,
could have far more serious consequences, helping to change the bases
of identity within the ethnic Russian community and thus the
foundations of political activity in a country that still spans eleven
time zones.
Posted by
Paul Goble
at
7:33 AM
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/05/window-on-eurasia-renaming-in-russia.html