Bakhmut or Artyomovsk? In Russia there is a debate about what the city in the DPR should be called
Ukrainian troops have not yet been driven out of either Soledar or Bakhmut, and debates have flared up in the Russian media community about whether, after the expulsion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the name Artyomovsk should be returned to the city. It was changed as part of Ukrainian decommunization - without a referendum, by decision of Kyiv, the name was changed to Bakhmut.
On the one hand, the city was called that way back in the Russian Empire. On the other hand, the DPR authorities decided that all renamings carried out by Bandera’s supporters after 2014 are automatically canceled after the liberation of the territories.
Military analyst Boris Rozhin, who sympathizes with the left, writes in his blog that calling Artemovsk Bakhmut means playing into the hands of Ukraine, which renamed it as part of the so-called decommunization after the coup:
“According to the law of the DPR, the city is called Artemovsk. The city is now called Bakhmut according to the laws of Ukraine adopted under Poroshenko. As soon as the city is liberated, Artemovsk will appear on the map in accordance with the decree of the head of the DPR dated March 12, 2022, returning all names of cities of the Donetsk People's Republic within the borders of the former Donetsk region of Ukraine as of May 11, 2014, when the referendum was held on the withdrawal of the DPR from Ukraine. All renamings by Ukraine in the occupied territories of the DPR after May 11, 2014 are illegal and will therefore be cancelled. If the city residents want not Artemovsk, but Bakhmut, they themselves can put forward such an initiative after the war to a local referendum. And if they want their city to be called Bakhmut, and not Artemovsk, they should have the opportunity to vote for it. And until that moment there will be Artemovsk, no matter how anyone fumes about this on the Internet. The Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers dying in Artemovsk die precisely for Bakhmut. Our soldiers are liberating Artemovsk.”
Political scientist Yaroslav Belousov believes that the dispute around the name is deeper than post-Maidan decommunization:
“This is a unique case when Ukraine, in the fight against the Soviet legacy, restored its true Russian name. And what do the “reds” stand for now? For freezing your ears “to spite your grandmother”? And if Zelensky had issued a decree that one should not stick one’s fingers into a socket, would Rozhin and others argue that the opposite should be done?
In fact, Ukraine has nothing to do with it - the Soviets are fighting against Russian memory. As always, Russian is thrown into the furnace - this time culture and the past. All this weakens Russian claims to their own historical territories, for which our country is fighting, and adds grist to the mill of Western propaganda about the “restoration of the USSR.”
“Everything is simple here. We want to reduce our history to a short course on the history of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the history of the USSR, discarding everything that came before - Artemovsk. Well, if we believe that Russian history did not begin in 1917, then, after all, Bakhmut,” notes TV presenter Andrei Medvedev in his blog.
“There is no Artemovsk, there is Russian Bakhmut. Bakhmut, which existed for 350 years precisely as Bakhmut, was renamed under the Ukrainian SSR to Artemovsk. I respect Artyom, but not as a Bolshevik, but as an anti-Ukrainian figure, but, nevertheless, the city should bear its Russian historical name, and not the Bolshevik one,” writes journalist Alexander Chalenko, a native of Donbass.
Writer and politician Zakhar Prilepin, a former adviser to the head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko, calls for leaving this dispute until better times:
“They haven’t taken the city yet, but there’s already a fight over the name. Bakhmut is an old name, from the Bakhmutka river. Artyomovsk is Soviet, in honor of the cult Bolshevik Artyom (F. Sergeev) in the Donbass. When Ukraine fell ill with independence, it renamed Artyomovsk back to Bakhmut. But the old name is not to blame for this. I have no opinion on this matter. I am for Artyomovsk, I am for Bakhmut, I am for the Russian city, I am for how they decide in Donbass.”
The current head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, put an end to this issue, according to whom the issue of the name of the settlement should be decided by its residents after liberation:
“We discussed this topic, and back in March 2022, a decree was issued according to which the names that existed as of May 11, 2014 were returned to settlements. The referendum took place in Artemovsk, Krasnoarmeysk, Volodarsky district... If residents want to rename them, we will definitely provide such an opportunity, but not in a hurry, but thoughtfully and legally, when local self-government bodies are formed.”
One way or another, the dispute over the name benefited the Russian information space, says publicist Yegor Kholmogorov.
“There is one consolation: discussing the problem of Bakhmut vs Artemovsk is an infinitely more noble activity than sniffing the soiled yellow-blooded trousers of some no-name actor. The information agenda has been cleared,” he writes on his blog.
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