Efforts to Remove Soviet Statues or Rename Streets Continue but With Ever Less Success

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 2 – In contrast to the 1990s when there were major fights about removing Soviet statuary and replacing Soviet names with pre-revolutionary names, today, these fights are more prolonged with officials, the KPRF, the population and the Russian Orthodox Church locked in fights that last for months and often do not lead to any change at all.

            Even when a powerful central political figure like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gets involved as he has about the name of a Moscow suburb where he grew up in the home of his grandparents, there is no certainty that any changes will occur. Instead, those who oppose change have learned how to dig in and block proposals that many others in fact support.

            That is the conclusion Aleksandr Mavromatis reaches in a study of recent efforts to restore old names or give new ones to streets, squares and cities or to dismantle or move statues of Lenin and other Soviet leaders from places of prominence to less popular locations (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/tixaya-dekommunizaciya-gd/).

            “The pulling down of monuments to communist leaders and the renaming of Soviet names for streets in Russia cannot now be called a widespread practice,” the commentator says. While there are still many who want that to happen, there are others who have learned how to oppose it and who are winning lest Russia become in their words “’like Ukraine.’”

            Many of these controversies are still bubbling, however, in smaller cities around the country. In the Urals city of Revda, officials sought to relocate the statue of Lenin, but the KPRF has been blocking that for two years.  Now, the city fathers say they hope to begin that process again at the end of this year or next.

            In Tambov, the fight is over whether a street named Stenka Razin by the Bolsheviks should become St. Pitirim Street as the local hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church wants. The KPRF is opposed, and citizens and the city authorities are caught in the middle. Nothing has been resolved.

            And in Samara, some want to rename Uritsky Street Crimea Street. Renaming the square in that way was easy because no one lived on it. But the street itself had residents and they didn’t want the name to be changed because they were used to it and didn’t see any reason to make a shift.

            Mavromatis also details fights over street names and monuments in Noginsk (where Lavrov unsuccessfully intervened), Tutayev, and St. Petersburg. 

            Three things are striking about the cases he cites: First, there is real politics going on. This isn’t a subject where the first person in the region makes a decision and it is implemented. Second, in many cases, local people demand hearings and polls before any change can be made and they are getting their way.

            And third – and this is something one can observe in other countries as well – those who oppose change often have the advantage because they can count on public inertia and the costs of moving a monument or changing the name of a street to add to their arguments. Usually the opponents of change win, but not always – and that encourages others who want change to try.