KIEV, April 8. /TASS/. The October square, named to honor the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in a west Ukrainian village has been renamed after pop-art king Andy Warhol on the orders of a local governor pursuing the so-called policy of ‘de-communization.’
"The October square in the village of Minay has been renamed into the Andy Warhol square," the press service of Transcarpathia region’s governor Gennady Moskal said on Friday.
The press service said Moskal signed a number of renaming orders in the framework of the decommunization law, covering all the streets named after Soviet leaders or events.
According to Moskal, the choice of Andy Warhol name was taken as the artist, whose parents were born in Slovakia, could have Ukrainian origins.
On March 2, Moskal proposed to rename the Vladimir Lenin street in a west Ukrainian village in honor of John Lennon, but after the protests of locals he renounced from the idea.
Moskal earlier said that if the local authorities do not change Soviet names of the streets, he will start renaming them himself "so that people will be ashamed of living there."
"For example, all Red Army streets will become Red Light streets," he said.
Last April, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed a law condemning Communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes, banned their propaganda and symbols. In May, President Petro Poroshenko signed four relevant laws, or the so-called "de-communization package."
Under the law, some 84 cities and towns, 857 villages and more than 10,000 streets, which names may be associated with the Soviet era, must be renamed.
Andy Warhol, famous for his Campbell's Soup Cans and Green Coca-Cola Bottles, was an American leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art and is currently one of the best sold contemporary painters.