ABSTRACT OF PRACTICAL ACTIVITY OF A WORKGROUP ON «DECOMMUNIZATION» OF PUBLIC AREA OF THE TOWN OF VINNYTSIA: HISTORIAN’S VIEW

Abstract

The article deals with practical activity of the workgroup created in order to administer the Law of Ukraine «On condemnation of totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and prohibition of propaganda of their insignia» within the town of Vinnytsia. The workgroup had to reveal objects containing communist and Soviet insignia that exists in the public urban area, to work out advice and propositions as to replacing town toponyms containing insignia of communist the totalitarian regime with new names. The article content is arranged in the following blocks: a) creation of the workgroup; b) decision-making algorithm (from historians’ point of view); c) scientific grounds of historian group activity; d) selection of objects for further discussion; e) procedure of discussion of proposed new toponyms. Six historians residing in Vinnytsia were introduced into the workgroup. They belong to various generations and represent both governmental and public organizations. The following principles have been defined for organizing of the historian group activity: - toleration (provides for respectful attitude towards various canons of historic memory except for Soviet-communist one); - historicism (due regard to be paid not only to the past but to current tendencies and challenges of the future as well); - education (the activity has to promote dialogs between various social groups and formation of unified collective memory); - local topicality with a view to the formation of unified image/brand of the town. Several approaches to practical activity on replacing of toponyms have been developed in order to ensure smooth work process. They were intended to be used simultaneously or in sequence depending on the actual situation but every proposal was concerned from the proposed standpoints in line with all the following approaches: - historicity (provides for restoration of historical names of places and implementation of historical and urban practical methods of representation of the town history in toponymy); - commemoration (this approach traditionally provides for drawing attention to the formation of ethnic and national identity and cultural matrix of the nation, but in the course of solving of nation-wide problems Vinnytsia historian group strived to be oriented to the identity of local urban community); - locality (conformity of toponyms to peculiarities of nature, history, economics and culture of Vinnytsia, Bratslavshchyna, and Podillia regions); - concreteness (provides for conformity of a toponym to its actual local (in line with toponym’s scale) circumstances (geographical, biological, industrial, cultural, religious, personological etc.); - actualization (due regard to be paid to the necessity of drawing attention to certain events and persons that, as a rule, are not of the nationwide scale). Out of total 836 town place names, 147 toponyms (85 names) have been replaced with new ones and reasoning for 5 names (12 toponyms) has been changed. Thus decommunization encompassed 19% of the town toponymical system.

Keywords

• decommunization
• Vinnytsia
• toponymical system
• toponym
• commemoration