What’s in a name? Plenty when it comes to streets
June 25 at 20:32 | Yuliya PopovaThe battle over history has moved to the street – Symon Petliura Street.
On June 18, city leaders ditched Kominterna Street, named after the international communist organization. They renamed it to honor Petliura, a giant but controversial figure in 20th century Ukrainian history.
The nationalist army general, a leader of Ukraine’s independence movement after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, served briefly as president of Ukraine during the nation’s short-lived independence from 1917-1920. He was assassinated in Paris in 1926.
The nearly kilometer-long street that now bears his name is a prominent one in Kyiv. It rolls down from the railway station to the center of Kyiv. It was at the center of one of the three communities in Kyiv where Jews were allowed to settle before the 1917 revolution.
The problem is, Petliura is considered by many as a killer of Jews. Naming any street after him – let alone this one – is offensive to them.
“I will always associate his name with Jewish pogroms, whatever political or historical scenarios will be forced upon us,” said historian Vladimir Kornilov from the Ukrainian branch of the CIS Institute in Russia.
Others, however, regard him as a hero and dispute his culpability in the Jewish pogroms.
Historian Volodymyr Serhiychuk argues that Petliura with his troops marched through this street “as a liberator” to announce the Ukrainian National Republic as free. Claiming independence from Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1917, Ukraine enjoyed fledgling freedom for only three years.
As a general of a nationalist army, Petliura attempted to defend his country from all sorts of invaders. He even fought a rival Ukrainian hetman, Pavlo Skoropadski, who collaborated with the Germans and the Russians on different occasions.
“Symon Petliura in the most difficult times of Ukrainian statesmanship was consistent in forming our independent national life,” said Serhiychuk, who originated the idea to rename the street after the general. “That’s why he was killed by the enemies of Ukrainian statehood.”
The debate about the general’s role in the pogroms has been disputed ever since his assassination. Some historians argue Petliura was not behind the pogroms, and tried to stop them, but failed to control his troops.
“Nobody has ever accused Petliura himself of participating in pogroms. But the question is: Was he a strong enough leader to stop it,” said chief Rabbi of Kyiv Yaakov Dov Bleich. “If he wasn’t, is he really a hero he was made into?”
Petliura was shot dead by a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist, Sholom Schwartzbard, in Paris. When arrested by the police, the killer reportedly said that he “assassinated a great assassin.” Schwartzbard was eventually acquitted by the French court.
But the debate lives on.
Yevhen Zayezdny, who was born at Kominterna Street in 1953 to a Jewish family, thinks that renaming streets after “odious personalities” is damaging to Ukraine’s reputation.
“It is equivalent to swapping a communist lie with a nationalist lie,” said Zayezdny whose father’s relatives were killed by Petliura’s troops. “If the street that serves as a gate from the railway to the city is named after the person whose murderer was justified by the French court, it casts shadow over our country and its capital.”
Ukrainian authorities disagree with this assessment.
Speaking at Petliura’s 130th anniversary in May, President Victor Yushchenko said Schwartzbard was a Soviet agent. “Petliura, like no one else, presented danger to the communist empire. Shots of a Bolshevik agent took away his life on May 25, 1926,” Yushchenko said.
A special city commission on self-government, whose competence includes renaming streets, apparently agreed when they chose Petliura over historian and poet Mykola Kostomarov, whose name could have been chosen instead.
A member of the commission, historian Tetyana Lyuta, suggested it could have been a political decision. She said she was not invited to the hearings. “[Mayor Leonid] Chernovetsky’s people get together whenever they want and decide whatever they want. I don’t have anything against Petliura but they should have organized a discussion first. Instead, they invited their pocket historians,” said Lyuta. Other commission members refused to comment by the time the Kyiv Post went to press.
There are not many people living on this street now. Dominated by restaurants, travel agents and boutiques, Petliura Street is a small beehive of business activity. Tucked away in a courtyard, the Kyiv Oblast Center for Protection and Scientific Research of Cultural Heritage looks like it is lost in time.
A cleaning lady in the center, Alla Serhiyenko, is overwhelmed that she may soon work at Petliura’s street.
Incidentally, she is a daughter of a Soviet Union hero, Ivan Serhiyenko, whose name adorns another street in Kyiv, as well as a school and a ship. “I would be very upset if they renamed my father’s street,” she said sighing. “He was a secretary of the clandestine [communist] party committee and was murdered by the Nazis when he was only 24. Authorities are questioning history today but is it his fault?” said Serhiyenko.
Attempts to replace parts of the communist historical heritage with divisive and not-so-divisive Ukrainian nationalists became popular in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Thousands of streets, libraries and institutes were renamed.
Some historians argue it’s a small measure of justice for people who resisted Ukraine’s occupation by the Germans, the Bolsheviks and White armies in the early 20th century. Others think it swings history from one extreme to another at the taxpayers’ expense. Some advise against changing street names, preferring that historical debates take place in the classroom and among academics.