Kirill Krok commented on the “cancellation of Vakhtangov” by Kiev in the Donbass

“Ukraine is becoming a nationalist state”

In Druzhkovka, a small city in the Donbass under Ukrainian control, on January 3, another batch of 55 streets was renamed as part of the so-called “derussification.”

In addition to the names of Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tvardovsky or Griboyedov, the “city military administration” “cleared” the map of the nearby village of Alekseevo-Druzhkovka in the name of Evgeny Vakhtangov. MK warned that this would happen back on October 31, 2023.

But then there remained a faint hope that the street of several houses, the name of which is not indicated on many maps at all due to its insignificance, would somehow miraculously survive. But the fighters against the “imperial legacy” of Vakhtangov in their “patrimony” nevertheless “canceled”.

Director of the Vakhtangov Theater Kirill Krok comments on the absurd situation:

– Ukraine is becoming an absolutely nationalistic state. To whom and with what did a street named Vakhtangov, a student of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, who created an entire movement in art, interfere with what is still “Ukrainian” territory?

– It is clear that the townspeople do not need “derussification”, not decommunization: no heating, water every other time, no light for several days. But Kyiv is pushing through the policies it needs “on the ground.”

– This once again proves the misanthropic ideology of those who today in Kyiv call themselves state authorities. Although there is no reason to be surprised: monuments to Pushkin are being demolished, the memory of the Marshal of the Soviet Union, who liberated Kyiv from the Nazi invaders, is being demolished, Russian-language books are being confiscated from libraries. At the same time, the monument to Taras Shevchenko is doing well in Moscow, and restaurants serve Ukrainian cuisine.

– It’s interesting, by the way, to penetrate into the logic of the “derussifiers”: were they trying to find out Vakhtangov’s nationality?

– If we talk about nationality, then Yevgeny Bagrationovich was not an ethnically Russian person. He was an Armenian (Vakhtangov’s father is Armenian, and his mother is Russian). That is, he is being forgotten because he lived and worked in Russia. By the way, what is Ukrainian theater today? It originates from the Moscow Art Theater.

Ukrainian theater comes from Russian – and attempts to erase this connection look ridiculous.

Let us recall that open sources mention Vakhtangov streets in Chelyabinsk and Tel Aviv, an alley in Vladikavkaz, monuments and memorial plaques in honor of Vakhtangov. Now, it seems, another street will become famous – Donbass. Because the first thing the DPR authorities will do after the annexation of Druzhkovka to the republic is to return the original names to the map.