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Ukraine’s Rada renames city after playwright ignoring residents’ wishes

An opinion poll showed more than a half, or precisely 56.6% of the local residents, were against the name change

KIEV, July 14. /TASS/. Lawmakers in Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, have decided to rename the town of Kirovograd to Kropivnitsky after the Ukrainian playwright, Mark Kropivnitsky, whose theatrical works were composed in Ukrainian. This is despite the fact that just four percent of local residents supported this idea.

An opinion poll showed more than a half, or precisely 56.6% of the local residents, were against the name change. On the other hand, one-third of the respondents, or 30.6% supported the idea of renaming the city to Yelisavetgrad. A mere 4.2 per cent of those surveyed supported the change to Kropivnitsky. Despite this, the explanatory note to the bill claimed that this was the only appropriate choice.

Rada Speaker, Andrey Parubiy said that by renaming the town, the parliament has partially fulfilled its decommunization agenda. The city was dubbed Kirovograd in 1939 in honor of Soviet politician, Sergey Kirov.

Kiev adopted decommunization legislation in May 2015 aimed at denouncing the Communist regime and outlawing Soviet symbols. The decommunization crusade requires that all facilities bearing the names of Soviet figures regardless of status be renamed. Also in the crosshairs, anything mentioning communism, Soviet power, or its institutions, is deemed illegal as well. One of the greatest uproars of late was fueled by Ukrainian parliament members, when they decided to rename the city of Dnepropetrovsk to Dnepr.

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