Residents of Baikonur are outraged by the renaming: Hotel Passage was canceled

“We have traditions. And now no one can protect us.”

The streets of Baikonur are beginning to be renamed in the Kazakh style. Residents of the space city do not agree with this: “This is a quiet expansion. Until 2050, Baikonur is leased from Russia. The authorities could have been patient until we all leave here,” they commented on the impending changes. We called the residents of Baikonur to find out their opinion about the upcoming innovations.

So far, the onomastic commission of the cosmocity has supported the petition of the special representative of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the Baikonur complex, Kairat Nurtai, to rename three streets of the city – Aviatsionnaya, Gostinichny Proezd and Naberezhnaya.

And at first glance everything seems to be fine. Since these new names, although Kazakh, are also about the friendship of peoples and perpetuate the memory of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, Heroes of the Soviet Union Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, Aliya Moldagulova and Manshuk Mametova.

And it seems that the initiative came from below: an initiative group of citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan approached the special representative. But for some reason the Baikonur residents feel sick at heart.

“Yes, this is all clear, Soviet soldiers, historical memory. But, to be honest, a residue remains. This is where it all begins. And then it came to us. Against the background of everything else that is happening in Kazakhstan, the names of Soviet streets are being renamed everywhere and monuments to Lenin are being demolished. It also reached Baikonur. It is clear that residents do not take this well. Our city is cosmic. We have traditions. And now no one can protect us. They told me to rename it – and they are renaming it, and even supposedly some strangers are asking for it,” 42-year-old Natalya bitterly told about her attitude to what was happening.

Meanwhile, more than half of the indigenous Kazakhstanis live in Baikonur. They are moving into abandoned apartments where former industry workers have moved out. The cosmic city of the future is becoming an ordinary settlement in the Kyzylorda region, where camels and cows graze on trash cans.

Local resident Natalya honestly says that most of her fellow countrymen have been finishing their jobs in recent years. And then everything – home, to the Motherland. Moreover, at one time, it was thanks to MK that 2,000 families of Baikonur had the opportunity to move to Russia.

“This year there was a large outflow again; people left mainly in the summer and autumn. The last three years have been a total blast. Now, after the renaming, we are once again convinced that no one needs us here, and the roads are all broken,” says another resident of the city, Sergei.

In response to this, the akimat of the Kyzylorda region, to which Baikonur actually belongs (legally, its residents are registered in the Odintsovo urban district of the Moscow region), reports that it pays constant attention to the maintenance and development of the social sphere of the city of Baikonur, so it is a sin to complain to Russians temporarily living here. In the near future, the department of architecture and urban planning of the administration and the apparatus of the Public Council of the city of Baikonur will have to carry out the main organizational measures for the renaming.

This initiative is justified by the fact that it was proposed to immortalize the names of Kazakhstanis in Baikonur 30 years ago. To rename the street 50 years of the Soviet Army into Abai Avenue, and the main street of Baikonur named after Karl Marx in honor of the founder of Soviet space technology Sergei Korolev – this was the last resolution of the Kazakh administration of the city of Leninsk in 1994 before its disbandment.