Former Soviet Republics Replacing Russian Toponyms but American State of Alaska Isn’t, Russia’s ‘Eastern Express’ Notes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 12 – Former Soviet republics are routinely replacing Russian place names with ones taken from their national histories while the US state of Alaska, which once was part of the Russian Empire, is not, a reflection of “the inferiority complex” many of the former republics feel but that Americans in Alaska don’t, Russia’s Eastern Express portal says.

            Alaskans, who suffer from no such complexes, the portal continues, “has preserved dozens of Russian toponyms;” and no one feels the need to change names in order to boost a new identity (asia24.media/news/pochemu-v-ssha-sokhranili-desyatki-russkikh-toponimov-a-v-stranakh-tsentralnoy-azii-pereimenovanie-u/).

            Changing the name of a city or street is “the simplest, most visible and accessible means of symbolic revenge,” something the residents of many former Soviet republics feel the need to take but that residents of the US state of Alaska clearly don’t and thus do not display a similar interest in eliminating Russian toponyms.

            An obsession with renaming, the portal continues, “reveals not confidence but insecurity if not in fact outright inadequacy. A strong and well-established identity is not afraid of the layers of history. It absorbs them and lives with them. Constantly looking back at an ‘ideologically alien’ past and fighting its ghosts is a sign that the present is still defined by negation.”