Symbolic Politics in Eastern Ukraine After Maidan: Changes in the Toponymy of Mariupol in 2014-2016

Abstract

The presented case of symbolic politics considers the confrontation between the central government and the local community in the field of memory management in post-conflict Mariupol. The starting point of the study is the establishment of control of military units loyal to Kyiv over the city. The package of memorial laws adopted by the Verkhovna Rada enshrined the glorification of the OUN and UPA (recognized in the Russian Federation as extremist organizations and banned) as the main direction of state memory policy and created the legal basis for “voluntary-forced” decommunization. The research question is what methods the central government uses to impose alien ideological attitudes on local communities and what forms of resistance the latter uses under legislative pressure. The methodological basis of the work is the case stage, combined with a toolkit of symbolic policy and institutional analysis, including the study of administrative practices, grassroots initiatives and acts of sabotage. The work shows that local elites minimized nationalist propaganda in the renaming processes, which contradicted the position of the Kyiv regime, which tried to manipulate public opinion through marginal public organizations and parties. As a result of dismantling and renaming (including decisions of the city council and the head of the regional administration), a model is fixed where the central government uses legislative novels and administrative pressure, and the local community uses available forms of sabotage of this policy.