Cherkasy finally gets its Chornovil Street

Members of the Cherkasy City Council backed the decision of the municipal toponymic commission to rename Engels Street to honor Chornovil. The council’s resolution was carried by 35 votes out of 38 councilors present on Thursday, December 13. The Communist councilors Viktor Bilousov and Valentyn Orel opposed it, while the independent Oleksandr Rudatsky abstained.

The renaming was in the works for a very long time. The mayor Serhii Odarych promised to have a street named after Chornovil back in 2011. However, he lacked the political will to fulfill his promise. Majority in the city council bitterly resisted this initiative. It took more than a year to have the proposal put to a vote. It fell three votes short on Tuesday, December 11, as it lacked support from the Party of Regions councilors, the Communists and former members of the dissolved Front of Changes caucus. Their motivations varied. For example, the Party of Regions’ Vitalii Diadchenko said his party colleagues preferred “common sense to petty politicking.”

“We experience the Sovietism not in street names, but rather in quality of life on these streets and municipal expenditure efficiency,” Diadchenko explained.

Author of the study Viacheslav Chornovil: A Portrait of a Politician, historian Vasyl Derevinsky said he had been really shocked to learn that the regional center of Cherkasy region where Chornovil was born had no street named after him. “The city council should have taken this decision long before 2012. It ought to be done back when Chornovil was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. New generations should learn from his example, as he is a symbol of the struggle for Ukraine’s independence. The first failed vote on renaming indicated a lack of national awareness and national dignity among the councilors. If we will not revere our heroes, we will have no future as a national community,” Derevinsky noted.