Public inertia towards the new toponymic landscapes in Vinnytsia, Ukraine

Abstract

The paper focuses on the practices of everyday use of street names after the massive toponymic cleansing under the frameworks of decommunisation and de-Russification in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Employing a mixed method approach, which includes a social experiment with the passersby on the streets of the city, analysis of the real estate advertisement and a series of interviews with the citizens, the authors reveal various practices of everyday use of new and old street names as a public response to the officially imposed city-text. The findings indicate that the transition from the old to the new toponymic system after the ideologically-driven toponymic cleansing does not represent an immediate and a single-step action, and should be considered a long-lasting, protracted and multi-staged process that requires several years or even decades. The gradual introduction of a new place name into various spheres of public life represents a kind of heterochronic coevolution driven by the collision of top-down vs. bottom-up interests. Another finding is that public inertia towards the new toponymic landscapes may be driven almost totally by motivations that have no relationship to ideology and politics. Also, it has been found that the actual communicative practices after the renaming depend on a variety of predominantly local factors and actors, including the specific place, place name, communicative situation and characteristics of the interlocutors. The findings are discussed in the framework of social sustainability, pointing at the need for clearly articulated and coherent municipal politics aimed at familiarising the community with newly introduced place names.