About this informed Oleksandr Babich is a public member of the historical and toponymic commission and historian. According to him, the issue of renaming geographical objects will be brought to public hearings only if there is a high social demand.
"In my opinion, broad consideration by society is not always constructive and productive. It is enough if it is considered by the historical and toponymic commission itself... When we already consider it, then the decision will still be made by the body of deputies," he says.
Oleksandr Babich noted that the toponymic commission consists of historians, local historians, directors and heads of museum institutions and officials.
Meeting of the toponymic commission of Odessa. Photo: Odesa City Council
So far, they have considered two issues: regarding the correction of the Russian spelling in the names and regarding which streets in Odesa fall under decommunization.
"I see that it is time to draw up a large register, which will consist of two halves. One half are those streets that now need to be de-Russified, because we have streets that carry imperial history. And the second is that there are proposals, and what names we will call this street," the historian said.
Proposals for renaming streets were made for five years. Since such a question did not arise for local self-government bodies, a reserve list was drawn up, says a member of the commission.
"Now a lot of proposals have been added to it, which concern, say, the Heroes of this war. There were suggestions regarding such streets as Heroes of the Defense of Mariupol, Heroes of the Defense of Mykolaiv. The names are somewhat generalized here, but we know that in Odessa we had heroes of the defense of Leningrad and the defense of Stalingrad," said Oleksandr Babich.
Currently, more than 100 streets in Odessa need to be renamed. Photo: skyscrapercity
There is currently no final list of streets that need to be renamed, however, according to the historian, there are more than a hundred of them.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, said in an interview with the New York Times that he does not see a direct need to rename Pushkin Street.
"I would not support this. Odesa is the intercultural capital of Ukraine. I am worried about the growth of hatred for everything Russian," he summarized.
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