At the weekend, the US Embassy in Russia issued a response to the decision of the Moscow authorities to name the unnamed area near the diplomatic mission building Square, which it named after the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Diplomats who wrote to the embassy’s Telegram channel said, “Let’s hope that important decisions in Russia will continue to be taken by voting”, leaving behind the decision to name the square after the vote in the Active Citizen project.
In Russia, these words did not react in any way.
“I honestly didn’t pay attention”
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told socialbites.ca in response to a request to assess the response of the American diplomatic mission.
title battle
It became known on June 8 that the area near the US embassy would become the site of the DNR. That day, the Moscow mayor announced the results of the vote for Active Citizen, stating that the alternative names are “Donbass Defenders Square” and “Russian Hero Square Vladimir Zhoga”.
The square (or street) of the Lugansk People’s Republic is also expected to appear in the capital. The Moscow City Duma suggested that this name be given to the area near the German embassy.
It is easy to see that behind the actions of the Moscow authorities there was a kind of reaction to the wave of renaming that swept the capitals of Western states after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
Within a few months, streets and squares in more than 10 Western cities near Russian embassies and consulates received new names dedicated to Ukraine.
A series of renamings began with the Baltic cities. On March 3, the mayor of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, announced that the street where the Russian embassy is located will be renamed “Street of Heroes of Ukraine”.
The next day Latvia joined the action. Then the press secretary of the Riga mayor promised that the part of Antonijas Street where the Russian embassy is located will be called “Avenue of Independence of Ukraine”.
Norway Oslo “Ukraine Square” on March 8, Albanian Tirana – “Street of Free Ukraine” on March 10, Canada Toronto – “Free Ukraine Square” on March 20, Czech Prague – “Street of Heroes” on March 24 He bought the “. Ukraine”. In April, four Polish cities – Krakow, Poznan, Gdansk and Gdynia – received place names associated with Ukraine. In the same month, street names were changed in the capitals of Sweden and Iceland.
Officials from Tallinn, Copenhagen, Dublin, Warsaw and New York have also spoken of their intentions to join the renaming series.
In the Russian Foreign Ministry, they prefer not to talk about the impact of the renaming wave on the prospects for the future restoration of relations between Russia and Western countries.
“You ask this question to those who have destroyed them and also renamed the streets for decades,” Maria Zakharova told socialbites.ca.
eastern trolling
It has indeed become common practice to rename the streets where Russian diplomatic institutions are located. More recently, in 2018, the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington was named “Nemtsov Plaza” in honor of the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who passed away 7 years ago.
After that, streets and squares with the name Nemtsov appeared in Vilnius, Kyiv and Prague. Most recently in April, Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, expressed its desire to join this list.
By the way, such “street diplomacy” is not exactly a Western invention. This is the first time such trolling has been used, oddly enough, against the United States.
In 1969, the communists who won the local elections in Kolkata, India changed the name of the street where the American Consulate General is located. He took the name Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and an enemy of the United States during the Vietnam War, which was in full swing at the time.
12 years later, this technique was used by Iran, a survivor of the Islamic Revolution, not against the United States, but against Britain. The growing tension in relations between Tehran and London coincided with a period of active struggle by the British government against Irish separatism. As a result, Winston Churchill Street, where the British embassy in Iran is located, was named after Irish MP Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike in a British prison.
By the way, Eisenhower Street in Tehran was renamed Freedom Street in the same year, and Kennedy Square became Tawhid Square.
All these place names are still preserved, but once Iran had to step back to re-establish diplomatic relations with Egypt.
In 2004, Iranian authorities named the street after Khaled al-Islambuli, the assassin of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In 1984, having mastered the methods of eastern diplomacy, the United States decided to use them against its main rival, the USSR. So the intersection of 67th Street and 3rd Street in New York was called the Sakharov-Bonner Corner. In this way, Washington showed its support for Andrei Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner, who were in Gorky’s exile. That same year, the US Senate approved the renaming of the strip near the Soviet embassy in Washington as Sakharov Plaza.
In 2016, the Americans tried to use this diplomatic maneuver against China – the US Senate proposed renaming the section of the street in Washington where the Chinese embassy is located, in honor of the Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been imprisoned since 2009. Liu Xiaobo.
However, the United States still did not dare to “troll” China – the renaming project did not find support in the House of Representatives.
Is “street diplomacy” an obstacle to building relationships?
Former UN Deputy Secretary-General, Soviet and Russian diplomat Sergei Ordzhonikidze said diplomatically, “of course, there is nothing good in this phenomenon.”
“It seems to me that this is not the most powerful action in diplomacy and in international relations in general. This is a purely political action, which, as a rule, is aimed at disturbing the state, whose embassy is represented on the territory of the host country, to some extent, “he said.
However, Ordzhonikidze stressed that the negative impact of changing place names should not be exaggerated.
“This is an indication of one country’s dissatisfaction with the actions of another. But nothing more,” he said.
According to the diplomat, such a renaming does not affect the actual diplomatic process. As a confirmation of his words, he cites the same intersection of 67th and 3rd Avenues in New York, as an example, called the “Sakharov-Bonner Corner”.
“It was renamed in 84, so it still bears that name. So what? Neither hot nor cold. This did not prevent further warming between Gorbachev and Reagan. Also, possibly in another case. Absolutely, these renamings do not affect the nature of the work of embassies and diplomatic missions, ”Ordzhonikidze summarized.