This past New Year’s Eve marked the last time Ukrainians could pop open “Soviet champagne,” as the Kiev factory that makes it has announced it is changing the popular drink’s name due to a law on decommunization.
The regulations, which came into force in May last year, ban any street, town or product from having names that glorify communism. They also make it a crime to deny the “criminal character of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917-1991 in Ukraine.”
However, in the latest sign that many people appear to be following the law in letter but not in spirit, the drink is to be renamed Sovietov.
“We have taken this step to save one of the main traditions of the New Year celebration,” the company said.
Ersatz champagne with the “Soviet” brand name has been produced since 1937, when the brand was first introduced at the height of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges. It is a popular drink on New Year’s Eve and at other celebrations, and comes in sweet, semi-sweet and dry versions — and at a fraction of the price of real champagne.
More seriously, the new law means that all Ukrainian town and street names with links to Soviet leaders or officials need to be changed and statues of Lenin would have to be removed from town squares.
Kiev’s main Lenin statue was pulled down by protesters in December 2013 at the beginning of the “Maidan revolution,” and since then there has been a spate of Lenin downings across the country. Now, the move is official, although the first Bolshevik leader remains standing in some places, especially in the east of the country. In the town of Lisichansk, the monument has not been removed but was vandalized just before New Year, with red paint poured over Lenin’s head and “I am the butcher of Ukraine” daubed on his body.
On Dec. 23, the Ukrainian parliament approved a list of 108 towns and villages that would have their names changed after local consultation, including Artemovsk, a major town in eastern Ukraine named after early Russian revolutionary Comrade Artem. The town is to go back to its pre-revolutionary name of Bakhmut.
Kiev’s decommunization law has caused controversy, with many criticizing an addendum which states that Ukrainian independence movements during World War II — some of which collaborated with the Nazis and were involved in massacres of Jews and Poles — should be respected as “fighters for Ukrainian independence.”
At a time when the country is embroiled in a war that has seen Russia-backed rebels take control of an eastern chunk of the country, the law does not seem to work to consolidate society, but rather the opposite.
Many of those in eastern cities who are pro-Kiev are uneasy about Ukrainian nationalist heroes and disagree with removing Soviet heritage.
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