Kyiv media: Odessa continues to fight for markers of the Russian World
In Odessa, they are trying to make it impossible to rename streets in honor of the fallen Armed Forces officers.
The Kiev online publication Zerkalo Nedeli writes about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We have already written that the mayor of Odessa Gennady Trukhanov until recently did not want to say goodbye to the monuments to Catherine II and Alexander Suvorov and spoke out against the renaming of Pushkinskaya Street. But after the dismantling of the monuments under public pressure, the city authorities continued to fight both for markers of the “Russian world” and against Ukrainian heroes.
For example, after public pressure, the process of changing the city charter was begun, which still glorifies the imperial army and defines the Russian language as “an integral component of the cultural heritage of the city community.” The published project leaves unchanged the date of the city's day - "September 2", which is a continuation of the myth about the founding of Odessa by Catherine II, and defines April 10 as "Day of the Liberation of Odessa" - in the Soviet manner, instead of the scientifically and historically acceptable definition of "Day of Expulsion of Nazis" occupiers,” the publication writes.
The author of the publication is especially outraged by the ban on naming streets after people if ten years have not passed since their death.
“This directly makes it impossible to honor the military who died defending Ukraine since 2014. There are many of them in Odessa. The same proposal was supported by members of the historical and toponymic commission of the city council, which is responsible for the process of renaming and dismantling monuments in the city.
Despite the full-scale invasion, the commission includes people who in 2016 tried to return communist names and abolish names in honor of the heroes of the Russian-Ukrainian war and UPR figures, or who admire Ukrainophobes. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are now looking for formal excuses to prevent the public space from being filled with the names of fighters for independence, most often proposing abstract names (Childhood Dreams, University), generalized (Ukrainian Heroes) or “cosmopolitan” (Ferenz Liszt, Riesling),” – indicated in the article.
It is noted that in public discussions “citizens can only vote for uncontested proposals of the commission, and public proposals are simply ignored.”
“Consequently, the absence of a strong reaction from the central government to the inactivity of the mayor at the beginning of the invasion and attempts to undermine the situation around the markers of the “Russian world” provide the ground for further provocative maneuvers. That is, while formally declaring general pro-Ukrainian theses, the Odessa authorities essentially continue to oppose the state policy of national memory, throwing into the public discourse, without exaggeration, humiliating and absurd theses,” ZN summarizes.
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