Alexander Pushkin
Soviet centennial celebrations

In the centennial year of Pushkin's death a mass renaming of existing streets in his honour occurred in the entire Soviet Union. Prior to 2022, Pushkin was the third most common historical figure represented in Ukraine's streetscapes, but his monuments were removed and streets that were named in his honour have been renamed as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These Pushkin monuments and any toponymy named after him are now illegal in Ukraine because according to the law that forbids their existence they are "dedicated to persons who publicly, including … in literary and other artistic works, supported, glorified or justified Russian imperial policy".

The centennial year of Pushkin's death, 1937, was one of the most significant Soviet-era literary centennials in Stalinist Russia, rivaled only by the 1928 centennial commemorating Leo Tolstoy 's birth. Despite the public display of visage on ever present billboards and candy wrappers, Pushkin's "image" conflicted with that of the ideal Soviet (he was reputed as a libertine with unrepentant aristocratic tendencies) and was subject to a repressive revisionism, similar to the Stalinist state's clean up of Tolstoy's Christian anarchism.
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