Nowhere Man: Ukrainians Swap Lenin For Lennon
Imagine all the people, living for today. And ditching their Soviet past.
The 6,000 residents of Kalyny, in western Ukraine, hope to do just that. They have renamed Vladimir Lenin Street after the late Beatle John Lennon.
Hennadiy Moskal, head of the Zakarpattia state administration, signed a decree renaming a total of 10 streets in the oblast, citing the so-called decommunization laws that have been enacted amid an effort to further spurn an era and imagery that Kyiv fears Moscow is using to promote self-serving myths while seizing territory and orchestrating unrest in neighboring Ukraine.
Moskal announced the move on March 2, saying local authorities and residents had failed to comply in time with legal obligations to rename streets and landmarks bearing Soviet names. Local communities proposed some of the new titles, Moskal said, while he chose others himself -- Lennon Street, for instance.
Other renamed streets announced by Moskal include one named after a fallen Ukrainian serviceman (Artem Markus), another dedicated to 20th-century Ukrainian political activist Edmund Bachynskyy, and one named after founding Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. His announcement called the decree "the first of its kind not just in Zakarpattia but in the whole of Ukraine."
Moskal may be a dreamer, but he's not the only one.
By: Anna Shamanska
Source: Radio Free Europe
