Features of the Implementation of Decommunization Policy of the Symbolic Space in Local Macrocommunities of Ukraine

Abstract

The article analyzes the practices of local self-government in Ukraine in the field of decommunization of urban spaces in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Dnieper. The peculiarities of the implementation of the policy of de-communization of the symbolic space indicate that since 2015, at the level of local macrocommunities, they have become public arenas of interpretations of the past. Their memorial symbolic structure reflects the competition between political actors representing competing commemorative orders. Local self-government practices have acquired their expressive specificity in each of the local macrocommunities. In particular, in Kiev, the policy of local self-government bodies is designated by us as “political”, which is associated with its status as the capital of Ukraine. It was this status that subordinated the symbolic space of local history and the retrospective reverse to historical names. Local authorities in Odessa and Kharkov carried out decommunization with the involvement, in addition to the political, pragmatic (Kharkov) and historical (Odessa) practices of renaming toponyms. Historical practice has become the core of the practice of decommunization of the symbolic space of the Dnieper. At the same time, local governments in all four cities of Ukraine were subjects of political competition (“symbolic struggle”) for the right to form and approve the idea of the legitimate order of the city's symbolic space. By referring to Ukraine's policy in the field of decommunization as one that has elements of symbolic violence, local governments fueled the social tension that accompanied the implementation of this policy.