Collective memory is neither an archive nor a museum. It is a living process in which society decides what to consider important and what to forget. It unfolds on the axis “past-present-future” and determines the choice: who to call a hero, who to immortalize with a date, to whom to erect a monument, and whose grave to leave nameless. In this sense, memory is not just a content, but also a language – a semiotic system of signs, symbols, rituals and narratives through which society formulates its own idea of the past. And, in the end, informs the world about himself.
Linguist Roman Jakobson rightly noted: diachrony – that is, the sequence of events in time – does not exclude synchrony, that is, their simultaneous presence in our memory. This is the nature of historical consciousness. The past is not just a chronology. In collective memory, events do not line up in a linear chain, but exist side by side, simultaneously, echoing each other. The main thing is that there is no contradiction between them. At least this is what scientists think. The famous Ukrainian communicator Heorhiy Pocheptsov once wrote that in the visual space, monuments of different eras do not contradict each other, because each of them is in its own contextual niche.
However, our semiotic experiments with memory – often chaotic, incomplete, devoid of a clear concept – lead to the exact opposite: conflicts of meanings, distortion of symbols and loss of historical integrity.
Semiotics of memory: whoever owns signs owns the past
There are no voids in collective memory: if we don’t fill them, someone else will. Semiotics – the science of signs and meanings – has been speaking about this directly for a long time: memory is not a dusty archive, but a living language. Not just what we remember, but as we frame it and what we mean by it.
Let’s recall what Yuriy Lotman, one of the classics of cultural semiotics, wrote: culture is a mechanism of memory. But, as in any language, this mechanism does not work by itself. It needs grammar, symbols, intonations. And when it comes to May dates, we face a conflict not of facts, but of signs.
May 9 is not a date, it is a semiotic construction. In the Soviet and now Russian context, it is filled with symbols: St. George’s ribbon, “immortal regiment”, “our grandfathers”, the word “fascism” in the meaning of any dissent. This is a ready-made language in which Russia announces victory, even if it is not its victory. And the world hears her. Because the world sees a picture, sees repeated signs – and remembers what it sees.
And what does Ukraine offer? So far – denial. Removal, dismantling, silencing. But in the logic of memory, negation is not action. From a semiotic point of view, the absence of a symbol is also a sign. A sign that you are not in control of your own narrative.
Ukrainian philosopher Anatoly Ishmuratov wrote about memory as a structure that can and should be analyzed logically – through language, schemes, modalities. If you do not create a new description logic, the old one will work. Russian The one that explains to the world every Soviet soldier as “Russian”, and every victory as “theirs”.
We did not create our “pantheon of war”
We did not create our own narrative. There are only fragments – streets named after Bandera, UPA, individual projects, museums, but there is no national image. There is no language in which Ukraine could speak about its past in the most terrible war of the 20th century, addressing the world. When we discard the old without creating the new, we drop out of the conversation.
Semiotics of memory is not only about memorials and street names. It’s about movies, posters, educational programs, sheet music, names, school textbooks. And while Russia holds a monopoly on these signs, every Ukrainian who died in World War II is automatically enrolled in their regiment.
One of the most tangible tools of this semiotics is space. The way we label cities, streets, and squares is a way of visually structuring collective memory. And precisely because of space – the names of urban names – a deep transformation is underway in Ukraine. Urban name reform, which gained new momentum after the start of the full-scale invasion, became not only a way to get rid of the Soviet legacy, but also an opportunity to create a new language of memory. But in this process it is important not only to erase, but also to formulate. Not only to reject someone else’s, but also to speak one’s own.
Streets without signs and heroes without names: a silent memory
In our cities, war has long been embedded in concrete. In the names of streets and avenues. In busts with orders. In half-erased bas-reliefs. It didn’t just remain in the archives – it lived in the urban space, reminding who are the heroes thanks to whom we won peace.
However, after 2014, Ukraine began a mass cleansing of the Soviet Union – decommunization. Plaques with the names of marshals, Soviet commanders, and heroes of socialist labor began to disappear from the facades. Surnames associated with the “Soviet narrative” began to disappear from the maps. And it was a logical step: we could not build a new country in a space saturated with symbols of the past empire.
But there is a nuance. Many of these names are not ideologues or executioners, not members of the NKVD. And soldiers, pilots, medics, and underground fighters are those who fought against Nazism, often without ideology, simply as honorable men in war. And when we dismantle their names without offering anything in return, we create a void in memory. We are erasing not only foreign symbols from the public space – we risk erasing the very presence of Ukraine in that war.
In semiotics, there is a concept of a sign without meaning. When the space is filled with symbols, but people do not understand what they mean – this is pseudo-memory. But it is even worse when there is not even a sign. Because then there is no reason to remember. When the Street of Heroes of Stalingrad disappears, so does the conversation about who exactly fought at Stalingrad. When General Vatutin’s prospectus disappears, the context in which it is possible to understand who this controversial figure was for Ukrainians is lost. It is known that in 2014 he was included in the list of people who fought against Ukrainian independence, but in 2015 he was not included in the updated list of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Thus, we are not rejecting ideology, we are rejecting the possibility of conversation.
Decommunization as a process should not only destroy, but also recode. If we take away the Soviet name, it is necessary to give the urban name a Ukrainian meaning. If we remove a bust of a Soviet soldier, we should put a sign that says: “Ukraine also fought here. And its heroes were in this terrible war.” Otherwise, we leave the field for the Russian myth, where all soldiers were “Russian”.
There are hundreds of Soviet memorials in Europe. Ukrainians are also buried under them, but none of them are named. It says: “Soviet soldier”. And the world thinks that this is a Russian. Because this is exactly what the narrative of Russia’s usurpation of the Soviet heritage looks like. Because that is how it was directed and introduced into the discourse of the era. And the worst thing is not even that Russia supports him in the future. The worst thing is that we didn’t create our own.
We do not have a Ukrainian vision of war. There are separate names, there are museums, there are films, there are streets, but there is no unifying image. There is no common language through which we can address the world. And therefore, in the eyes of the world, that grandfather from Cherkasy or Poltava will remain a “Russian winner.”
We risk losing not the past, but the right to it. If we simply delete the Soviet one, but do not offer the Ukrainian one, we will become the background of someone else’s victory. And we were not the background. We were the vanguard.
Today, many cities have UPA or Bandera streets – and that’s right. But where is the street of Ukrainian artillerymen who died near Warsaw? Where is the square named after women doctors from Kharkiv? Where is the memorial of Ukrainian ostarbaiters? We have not yet created the Ukrainian semiotics of memory – a complete system of signs through which society reads its history. Instead, we have either fragments of the Soviet text or silence.
How other countries are renaming their streets: constructive urbanonymic approaches
Decommunization of street names is a painful and at the same time politically and emotionally charged process. And Ukraine is not the only country trying to distance itself from a difficult or traumatic past through toponymy. The world has many examples where the renaming became not an act of forgetting, but a gesture of rethinking. And the main thing is to include communities in this conversation.
South Africa: from exclusion – before inclusion
After the fall of apartheid in the 1990s, South Africa faced the question of what to do with street names that glorified colonial or racist heritage. The part was renamed, but the authorities bet on inclusivity. For example, in Cape Town, some streets have been given new names in different local languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans), symbolizing multilingualism and equality. Thematic districts were also created, where new names were grouped according to logic: streets of women’s names, cultural figures, fighters against apartheid, that is, a coherent narrative was created.
Germany: save with a question mark
Germany in the postwar decade did not try to completely erase the Nazi past, but neither did it glorify it. In Berlin, you can still find streets named after controversial historical figures, but with additional plaques: a short text explaining who the person is, what his merits are, and what his responsibilities are. This is an example semiotic enrichment, rather than simplifying memory. This approach provides space for critical thinking and dialogue.
Canada: Decolonization through Dialogue
In Canada, the process of toponymic decolonization is actively underway, in particular in the provinces where the indigenous population lives. For example, streets were renamed in Ottawa, the names of which offended Indian communities. But the key was that decisions are made through consultation with local communities, often with a symbolic recognition of “two truths”: the old name sometimes remains as an alternative or museum object. Some toponyms become platforms for education.
Poland: toponymy as a continuation of the politics of memory
In Poland, especially after 1989, toponymy became part of national policy. However, the replacement of the Soviet names took place in stages: in Warsaw, the Red Army Avenue became Józef Piłsudski Avenue, but at the same time memorial places were created for the Polish victims of the war, with a clearly defined context. Poland is also actively creating thematic urbanonymic zones: for example, in Krakow there are quarters where streets are named after scientists, cultural figures or writers.
Georgia: caution without amnesia
Georgia also experienced decommunization, but after the war with Russia in 2008, the process intensified. The “clean slate” approach works here: streets with Soviet names often received completely new names, sometimes from folklore or from the history of Georgian statehood. But at the same time, museum memory of the Soviet era is preserved in Tbilisi, even if it is debatable, through memorial halls or local plaques.
What experience can be taken from Ukraine?
Group logic: renaming should not be accidental, but conceptual – quarters of cultural figures, human rights defenders, scientists.
Explanatory plates: remnants of old names can be saved in the form of a museum explanation or a QR code.
Community participation: it is important not just to remove Soviet symbols, but to have a conversation with the residents of communities, asking whose names they want to see on the map of their city or village.
Places of complex memory: even the heroes of the Second World War, who served in the Soviet army, can be reinterpreted – not as part of the empire, but as Ukrainians at war.
Memory is the language of the space that surrounds us, and urbanonyms are actually its alphabet. We can cross out letters, but if we don’t write new words, we can’t tell the world what we were. And then we won’t be in this war. Not because we didn’t fight. And because we didn’t name ourselves.
It’s time to create your own pantheon. Own language of memory. We need new dates, new rituals, new memorials. Ukrainian Soldier’s Day. Films that will tell our truth. Museums in which there is a place for a soldier of the UPA, and a soldier of the Red Army, and an ostarbeiter, and a child who did not survive the occupation. Because real memory does not choose the convenient ones. She gives a voice to everyone.
Memory is not a shadow of the past. This is the form of the future. If we ourselves do not name our heroes, they will be called someone else’s. And if we do not preserve ourselves in history, we will not be in it.
