The city of Kharkiv has decided to rename three metro stations and 48 streets to "remove Russian markers from public space," Governor Oleh Syniehubov announced on July 26.
"This is an important step of decolonization," Syniehubov said after signing the decree.
Ukraine's parliament outlawed most Soviet and communist symbols, street names, and monuments as part of a decommunization process in 2015.
President Volodymyr Zelensky then signed a law in April 2023 that banned naming geographic sites in Ukraine after Russian figures or historical events in response to Russia's full-scale invasion.
Heroes of Labor metro station in Kharkiv will be named Zavodska, meaning factory in Ukrainian.
Malyshev Factory metro station, originally named after the Russian-born Soviet statesman and engineer Vyacheslav Malyshev, will be renamed Saltivska, after Saltivka, the Kharkiv residential neighborhood that has been hardest hit by Russian attacks.
Gagarin Avenue, named after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, will be renamed Aerospace Avenue. Gagarin Avenue metro station will now be named Levada metro station, after the name of a nearby neighborhood.
Liliane Bivings
Other streets that have been renamed include Lermontov Street, named after Russian writer and poet Mikhail Lermontov. The street will now be named after Maik Yohansen, a Ukrainian poet of Latvian ancestry who rose to prominence in Kharkiv in the 1920s.
The Soviet authorities accused Yohansen of being part of a "Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalist terrorist organization." He was executed by firing squad in 1937.
Tchaikovsky Street will be renamed after another Ukrainian poet executed in 1937, Mykhailo Semenko, who is considered the founder of Ukrainian futurist poetry.
The targeting of Ukrainian cultural figures in the 1930s was so widespread that those who were murdered are referred to in Ukraine as the "Executed Rennaisance." Many of those who were killed were living and working in Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1919 to 1934.
Other renamings will have more modern references. One street will be named after the 92nd Assault Brigade, while another street will be named after the Khartiia Brigade of the National Guard. Both brigades fought in the Battle of Kharkiv in 2022.
The new names were chosen by a special working group of the Kharkiv City Council, which included local historians, scientists, and members of the public.
"The working group held nine meetings, discussing all proposals in detail," Syniehubov said. The members of the working group chose the new names through a vote.
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