The reason is likely not only in the fact that the street’s name was changed to that of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the OUN and a controversial figure for Lutskers, even though Lutsk is the central city of Volyn where, as we all know, the UPA came into existence. Rather, the problem is with the people who live on this street.
For many years the street bore the name of Aleksandr Suvorov, a Russian military leader. It is a centrally located street which runs parallel to Prospekt Voli, Lutsk’s main drag which in Soviet times was called Lenin Street. On this street, and abbutting on Suvorov Street, stands a massive building which used to host the regional Communist Party apparatus and now is the central building of Volyn National University. Under the old regime apartments in this district naturally went not to the workers of numerous city plants and factories, but primarily to party and government administrative personnel whose views are incompatible with the people who, under Bandera’s guidance, participated in the national liberation movement. This is what one is led to infer from the statements voiced by the street’s residents. Some say they are going as far as looking to move to a different district in the city.
The street’s residents even organized rallies to defend its previous name. However, they have failed to reach a consensus: there are enough Lutskers who either favor the new name or are simply indifferent. The opponents of the new designation cited, of all people, Vasyl Kushnir, the head of the Volyn OUN-UPA Brotherhood, who said that he wished Bandera’s name were given to some other street. Finally, Bohdan Shyba, the mayor of Lutsk, prevailed, although quite a few residents of the city are opposed to the move.
Despite its central location the street with the disputed name is quiet and small. It has residential five-storied buildings, a branch of a bank, a private notary’s office, a hairdresser’s shop, a branch of the central city dentist clinic, and a building occupied by the oblast healthcare department. Many people would like some bigger street to be named after Bandera. In a similar way, General Shukhevych’s name now graces a very small street, or rather a lane, formerly called after Nikolair Kuznetsov, a Soviet intelligence agent.
Responding to the demands of the street residents calling for a reversal, Shyba said: “Why aren’t the residents complaining about the fact that we have recently carried out maintenance works on their street?” True enough, concurrently with a new name the street received new asphalt pavement, which is just one of the examples of numerous projects of this kind which are under way in various districts of the city.
Shyba’s tongue-in-cheek quip can be interpreted as saying that, according to the residents’ reasoning, the new asphalt needs to be scraped off, the old name restored, and, one wonders, we need to go back to the old mode of existence. He is surprised to see such protests and appeals being voiced in the city which was the cradle of the OUN-UPA and calls them “blasphemous.”
