Erasure and Renaming of Place Names

Aggressors may carry out the deliberate replacement of the historical geographic names, street names, city names, and region names of the Indigenous people with toponyms tied to the culture, ideology, and history of the metropole. Erasing the original names allows the colonizer to visually and mentally integrate the seized lands into its state space, and to deprive the colonized society of the physical markers of its national identity and historical memory.

ID: T0043
Sub-techniques:  No sub-techniques
Tactic: Persistence
People: Ukrainians
Version: 1.0
Created: 21 April 2026
Last Modified: 21 April 2026

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
C0103 Full-Scale Invasion (from February 24, 2022)

Deliberate restoration of old Soviet or imperial names to captured cities and streets (in particular, the renaming of Bakhmut to Artemovsk) in order to erase Ukrainian national memory and visually integrate them into the space of the Russian Federation.

S0008 Government

Erasure of the historical names of the southern Cossack territories, which had been used as a staging ground for the annexation of Crimea, and their renaming by Catherine II into the colonial construct "Novorossiya"[1].

C0035 Military Annexation of the Crimean Khanate (1783)

Erasure of the historical names of the southern Cossack territories, which had been used as a staging ground for the annexation of Crimea, and their renaming by Catherine II into the colonial construct "Novorossiya"[1].

S0012 Occupation and Controlled Administrations

Deliberate restoration of old Soviet or imperial names to captured cities and streets (in particular, the renaming of Bakhmut to Artemovsk) in order to erase Ukrainian national memory and visually integrate them into the space of the Russian Federation.

G0009 Russian Empire

Erasure of the historical names of the southern Cossack territories, which had been used as a staging ground for the annexation of Crimea, and their renaming by Catherine II into the colonial construct "Novorossiya"[1].

G0011 Russian Federation

Deliberate restoration of old Soviet or imperial names to captured cities and streets (in particular, the renaming of Bakhmut to Artemovsk) in order to erase Ukrainian national memory and visually integrate them into the space of the Russian Federation.

References

  1. Михаил Зыгарь. (2023). Война и наказание: Как Россия уничтожала Украину.