The use of Mikhail Bulgakov’s name in the names of geographical objects and legal entities, the presence of monuments and memorial signs erected in his honor in public space are propaganda of Russian imperial policy.
This is about it in the expert opinion of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
Bulgakov was born in Kyiv in the family of Athanasius Bulgakov, a native of the Oryol province. Graduated from the medical faculty of the University of St. Volodymyr in Kyiv, in 1916-1919 he worked as a surgeon in Red Cross hospitals in Kamianets-Podilskyi and Chernivtsi, a zemstvo doctor in Smolensk province, and a venereologist in Kyiv. From 1921 until his death, he lived in Moscow. All of Bulgakov’s works are written in Russian.
“Mykhailo Bulgakov is an imperialist in outlook, an ardent Ukrainophobe… The writer, despite his years of living in Kyiv, despised Ukrainians and their culture, hated the Ukrainian desire for independence, spoke negatively about the formation of the Ukrainian state and its leaders. Among all Russian writers of that time is the closest to the current ideologues of Putinism and the Kremlin’s justification of the genocide in Ukraine,” the UINP concludes.
Bulgakov’s compulsively declared contempt for Ukraine is rooted in the fact that his family was sent to Kyiv from the Oryol province for colonial activities. The father was a Russian theologian, a teacher at the Kyiv Theological Academy and a censor who was involved in suppressing Ukrainian culture.
Members of the expert commission of the Institute of National Remembrance noted that Bulgakov was biased towards the Ukrainian world. He does not present a single positive Ukrainian character in his works, parodies or mockingly distorts the Ukrainian language, mocks the Ukrainian autocephalous church, denies the very existence of the Ukrainian nation, and discredits the Kobzar tradition.
“Therefore, Mykhailo Bulgakov had a biased and distinctly negative attitude towards everything Ukrainian – Ukrainians, their language, culture, the right to their own state, etc., and his work is directly related to the glorification of Russian imperial policy and undisguised Ukrainophobia. Assigning his name to geographical objects , the names of legal entities, objects of toponymy, as well as the establishment of monuments and memorial signs in his honor in Ukraine was the embodiment of Russification”, – the conclusion of the National Institute of National Statistics reads.
Derussification and decommunization in Ukraine
- In March of last year, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Law on Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Geographical Names” regarding the decolonization of toponymy and streamlining the use of geographic names in populated areas of Ukraine.
- The amendments provide for the prohibition of assigning names to geographical objects that glorify, perpetuate, promote or symbolize the occupying state.
- Last month, the UINP declared that the Arch of Friendship of Peoples (renamed the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People) in Kyiv is a symbol of Russian imperial policy and should be completely dismantled.
- It also became known that Chervonograd in the Lviv region will soon become the city of Sheptytskyi.
- In Kyiv, 10 more city objects were renamed within the framework of de-Russification and decommunization.
