Change street names!
We make sure that the correct names of geographical objects are more important than we used to think.
Some time ago, my life threw me briefly into Semenov, a small and problematic town in the north of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The names of streets located in the central part of the city seem to have come from the pages of Soviet encyclopedias - Lenin Square and the October Revolution, Lenin, Sverdlov, Rosa Luxemburg Streets, 3rd International, May 1 - I can continue further. But even more struck were the names of the streets located on the eastern outskirts of the city — streets of Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Melnikov-Pechersky, Lomonosov walked parallel to each other, at the intersection with them — Chekhov and Chernyshevsky streets. Kutuzov Street ran parallel to Suvorov Street, and Repin Street was adjacent to Serov Street. It seems that the person who designed this town, having sorted out the standard set of communist toponyms, simply opened a textbook on Russian literature (history, fine art) and gave the street the names of famous writers . He did not even need to scroll further than the table of contents.
Monument to Lenin in Semenov on Lenin Square (opposite the administration building)
I think you already realized that all these great people (with the exception of Melnikov-Pechersky) have not linked with the history of the town. However, it cannot be said that Semenov is an absolutely faded and uninteresting place. The city is associated with the popular Khokhloma painting, Russian nesting dolls, woodworking, craftsmanship and Old Believers. It has been leading its history as a city since the 18th century, there are interesting ancient brick buildings and churches. Semenov has his own personality, but it is not displayed on his map.
How many such places are scattered throughout Russia? For the most part, these small provincial towns, with a spontaneous private sector, signs of all known federal chains and banks, with the typical micro-districts of five-story buildings on the outskirts, are insanely similar to each other. Add to this the absolutely Soviet street names (the Soviet government is perhaps the only one that seriously thought about place names) and an incessant feeling of deja vu is formed. You have already been here, you have already seen all this, you will not find anything new here. You want to quickly finish your trip and leave here.
Names are not just identifiers of objects. People can change their metier, close institutions and enterprises, re-build territories - and only the name will remain. Often it is the only witness to the past. When traveling in the same Nizhny Novgorod and neighboring Kostroma regions, a large number of small rivers (Vetluga, Vokhtoma, Klyazma, Moksha, etc.) have to be passed - if you delve into their place names, you can find out that many names have Mari or Mordovian roots. Rivers are one of the oldest objects near which people settled, they used them in economic activities and gave names. For a dozen centuries, these peoples have assimilated with the Russians, built Russian villages and cities here, and only the rivers continue to keep the history of these places in their names. They are a small proof that in these places in past centuries a large number of peoples of different origins and with different histories lived in the neighborhood.
On this index, 3 place names refer to the Mari language - and only one does not apply. Guess which one?
Traces of Mari history on Nizhny Novgorod signs
Names and titles - this is a kind of cultural layer of the place, as expressed in the language of archeology. If you dig shallowly, you will get traces of recent history, a little deeper - a couple of centuries ago, even deeper - by the time BC. Similarly, by the names on the outskirts of cities, much can be said about modern history, by the historical names of the central part of the city - from the 17-19 centuries, and by the names of rivers and ancient settlements - to go even deeper into the past. Like the remnants of a person’s life in the cultural layer, names and titles are also formed randomly and spontaneously - but looking at them together, it is already possible to build and confirm hypotheses.
Soviet toponymy erased all this individuality completely, leaving the names a purely utilitarian function.
I am not against Soviet names in principle - if a district and a city were formed during the Soviet period, it is logical to give names to streets and squares based on symbols of Soviet mythology. It is probably stupid to rename Ulyanovsk back to Simbirsk - nevertheless, Vladimir Lenin (Ulyanov) was the largest figure in the history of the city. But for historical settlements and places to which people gave names even before the October Revolution, historical names are more appropriate.
When a resident of the city comes across a name every day, he will inevitably want to figure out where it came from. And a tourist walking slowly around the city will take and read the plate on the first house, or maybe enter the name in the search engine. The atypical, not hackneyed name always attracts attention. I often found myself thinking that I, as a Russian, are interested in the place names of Kazan - I don’t know who Gabdulla Tukai or Burkhan Shahidi is and I instinctively want to drive these names into a search engine. Googling who Marx, Kuibyshev, Kirov and Budyonny are, walking around the center of Tambov is not interesting for me. Firstly, I know the answer, and secondly, I have a modest suspicion that they have no significant relation to the history of the city, which was founded in the 17th century. Even adjusted for the rich revolutionary history of the Tambov Territory, covering the entire city center with faceless Soviet names is wrong. You can laugh at Ukranian, renaming one of their largest cities (from Dnepropetrovsk to the Dnieper). But at the subconscious level, the question who was Petrovsky (even though he was a native of the city), that it was decided to give 1.5 millionth city its name?
Cognitiveness and personality can become a tourist product of many cities. It is very easy to confuse the cities of Dzerzhinsk and Dzerzhinsky, numerous cities derived names from the word "Lenin". There are true and reverse examples - tourists often confuse Veliky and Nizhny Novgorod between themselves. One way or another, the name of the city is marketing tool, the brand, it attract tourists itself. If it does not cause positive associations and causes boredom - how many tourists will go there?
Any initiatives related to renaming run into numerous protests of both residents and officials. The first ones say - they say there’s nothing more to do, and so there are enough worries, they distract our attention from real problems. The second claim - to change a lot of plates, pointers, rewrite documents. In general, there are only difficulties and problems. Therefore, let us to save the grayness and boredom surrounding us.
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