Last week, the Kyiv City Council renamed Sevastopol Heroes street to Academician Shalimov street.
The renaming took place within the framework of the law on decolonization. After all, the pseudo-Greek name Sevastopol was invented by Catherine II as part of the “Greek project” in 1784. Thus, the city of Akyar was renamed Sevastopol, which means “imperial city”. But in fact this name was borrowed, because in ancient times Sebastopolis was called a settlement in the place of modern Sukhumi.
In the poll in Kyiv Digital, among all the options for renaming the street, the option ” Academician Shalimov St.” won with 13715 votes.
Alexander Shalimov was one of the founders of the Ukrainian surgical school and an outstanding surgeon who performed about 40 thousand operations!
It should be reminded that over the last three centuries the Crimean peninsula has been subjected to large-scale russification and sovietization, which is clearly reflected in the renaming of various geographical names.
First of all, the Russian authorities at different times did this in order to destroy the culture, language and history of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine – Crimean Tatars, Karaites and Krymchaks, as well as their connection with their native land. Thousands of historical names of settlements and geographical objects were renamed in Crimea.
You can read more about this in our campaign “By returning the names – we’ll return Crimea”.