Members of the Chervonohrad City Council voted to rename the Chervonohrad City Council to the Sheptytsky City Council.
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How the name was changed from Chervonohrad to Sheptytskyi
Historically, Chervonohrad was called Krytynopol (Krytynopil). The city was founded (the first written mention is from 1692) by Feliks-Kazimir Potocki, a Krakow voivode and hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He named the town after his wife Krystyna Lubomyrska. In 1772, Krytynopil and its neighbourhood became part of the Habsburg Empire.
This remained the case until 1951, when, after an exchange of territories, Krytynopil passed from Poland to the Soviet Union. At the same time, the coal mining industry began to develop in the region. New neighbourhoods of the city, now called Chervonohrad, grew up around the newly built mines, next to the old Krytynopil.
Halyna Hrynyk, the head of the local museum, located in the former palace of the Polish nobleman Potocki, takes out the archival back issues of the local newspaper Shakhtar Chervonohrad. One of the issues of 1987 was dedicated to the 36th anniversary of the “new city over the Western Bug”. “When it came to the new name (…), there were no special discussions: the red city of Chervonohrad is our name from the colour of the revolution, from the colour of its flag,” reads Halyna Hrynyk.
Attempts to rename the mining town of Chervonohrad in Lviv Oblast were already made in the first years of Ukraine’s independence. In addition to Krystynopil, Khrystynopil, the idea of Zhovtoblakytynsk was also raised. But then Ukrainian parliamentarians did not agree on one letter – Krystynopil or Khrystynopil. Therefore, the renaming attempt was unsuccessful.
However, according to the Law of Ukraine “On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes in Ukraine and the Prohibition of Propaganda of Their Symbols”, Chervonohrad is subject to renaming, regardless of the opinion of the community.
The UINP’s expert commission on determining whether objects belong to the symbols of Russian imperial policy has established that the name Chervonohrad should be decommunised.
In December 2023, the UINP reported that the Verkhovna Rada would rename Chervonohrad due to the city’s association with the implementation of Russian imperial policy:
“In view of the above, the name of the city of Chervonohrad, Lviv region, as associated with the implementation of Russian imperial policy (the establishment of Soviet power on the territory of Ukraine), in accordance with subparagraph “e” of paragraph 4 of part one of Article 2 of the Law, belongs to the symbols of Russian imperial policy.”
In turn, the Chervonohrad City Council studied the public’s opinion on the options for a new name for the city. The community gathered in the hall did not support the renaming of the city. Nor did the deputies of the Chervonohrad City Council come to the same conclusion. Therefore, the name of the city was determined by members of the Verkhovna Rada.
On 19 September, the Verkhovna Rada renamed 327 Russified settlements, including the city of Chervonohrad, whose name was changed to Sheptytskyi.