Goodbye, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy: Ukrainians look to ‘decolonize’ their streets.

Far from Ukraine’s embattled eastern front, a new struggle is being waged — not from the trenches, but over leafy side streets and broad avenues. That is where the enemy goes by the name Pavlov. Or Tchaikovsky. Or Catherine the Great.

Across Ukraine, officials are starting projects to, as they say, “decolonize” their cities. Streets and subway stops whose names evoke the history of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union are under scrutiny by a population eager to rid itself of traces of the nation that invaded in late February.

“We are defending our country, also on the cultural front lines,” said Andriy Moskalenko, the deputy mayor of Lviv and the head of a committee that has reviewed the names of each of the city’s more than 1,000 streets. “And we don’t want to have anything in common with the killers.” Read more

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