KIEV, Ukraine — When Ukraine broke from the Soviet Union in 1991, it never bothered to clear away the hammers and sickles that marked it as a workers’ paradise. Now it is making a belated effort to declare independence from the communist past — and workers are racing through the country to take down old Soviet symbols.
Lenin statues are toppling. Red stars are being chipped off the mosaics on the Kiev metro. Streets named after Soviet heroes are being rechristened. A nationwide push is underway to clean up communism ahead of Ukraine’s independence day on Aug. 24.
But the speedy work, mandated by a new law, has drawn scorn from critics in a divided nation where one person’s enemy of the state is another’s hero. Soviet history left so many traces that nearly every street corner can spark an ideological debate. Both advocates and critics of the efforts say that what’s at stake is Ukrainian identity.