Donetsk city councilmen have refused to remove the symbols and attributes of totalitarianism that are still present on the streets of the miners’ capital. At issue are the monuments to Soviet personalities and the many totalitarian-era names of streets and districts of this eastern Ukrainian city.
A proposal to rename streets and districts and to partially dismantle Soviet-era monuments was submitted by the Donetsk Oblast State Administration, guided by the decrees of the Ukrainian government and the current law. The members of the oblast administration, however, refused to destroy the Soviet-era monuments. The oblast’s leaders just want to get rid of things that remind citizens of the Holodomor and political repressions.
At a regular session of the Municipal Council most of the members voted unanimously against this decision, refusing to do away with the symbols of totalitarianism that may be seen throughout the city. The council’s infamous secretary, Mykola Levchenko, an especially ardent opponent of the oblast administration’s proposal, reiterated that socialist monuments should be preserved in Donetsk because they portray its history. “We have historical names in the city; some people associate them with totalitarianism, but I associate them with the fact that we were all born in this country,” he underlined.
According to Levchenko, the oblast administration’s demand was on hold at the Donetsk Municipal Council for nearly a year, and the city councilmen were finally compelled to consider it. The head of the Municipal Council, Oleksandr Lukianchenko, also supported the decision, as he has always spoken out against the idea to dismantle Soviet monuments and rename city streets.
The mayor has always explained his refusal on financial rather than ideological grounds. According to Lukianchenko, renaming streets is too expensive for the city. This process not only requires changing street signs but also the passports of people who are registered in the city.
Be that as it may, the residents of Donetsk do not treat the city’s Soviet-era monuments and street signs with any particular reverence. Sometimes they even damage the Lenin monuments that are ubiquitous throughout the oblast. In Donetsk, some pranksters painted the shoes of a Lenin statue white, while in the city of Kramatorsk unknown vandals wrote “Lennon” instead of “Lenin” on the base of the pedestal of their city’s monument to the Bolshevik leader.
