Is renaming a street extremism?

On September 3, 2008, the head of the Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma, Vladimir Lakeev, turned to the Moscow prosecutor with a request to check for compliance with the legislation of renaming Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street into Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street. Among other things, he referred to the fact that the initiative to rename "humiliates and offends the feelings and dignity of the communists and patriots of our Motherland" , and therefore falls under the definition of extremism.

We are talking about the decree of the Moscow government "On perpetuating the memory of A. I. Solzhenitsyn in the city of Moscow", adopted on August 12, 2008.

Expressing a number of complaints about this resolution, the deputy, in addition to well-founded ones (such as, for example, that the time established by law did not pass after the death of Solzhenitsyn), indicates that the writer was an anti-Soviet and nationalist, which, in the opinion of the complainant, offends the feelings of the Communists and leads to a split in society, and therefore - to extremism.

Without touching upon the essence of the claims of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, we note that such appeals to anti-extremist legislation by the party, which itself suffers from its too broad interpretation, seem to us inappropriate and harmful.

On November 14, 2008, the deputy filed a secondary complaint on this matter, this time to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, since the answer received from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office did not satisfy him.

Sources

• Vladimir Lakeev appealed to the prosecutor of Moscow: It is unacceptable to rename Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street to Solzhenitsyn Street // Website of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party. 2008. September 3rd.
• Deputy V.I. Lakeev appealed to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation regarding the renaming of Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street into the street of the anti-Soviet figure Solzhenitsyn A.I. // Website of the Moscow city branch of the Communist Party. 2008. November 14.