Mobilities of toponymic place branding in an autocratic post-Soviet city: The Mayak Minska (the Lighthouse of Minsk) and the Minsk-Mir (the Minsk-World) megaprojects

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the spatial politics of profit-oriented place naming (toponymic commodification) in connection with two urban megaprojects in the Belarusian capital. We focus on the Mayak Minska (the Lighthouse of Minsk) and the Minsk-Mir (the Minsk-World), by far the largest residential-commercial urban developments in post-Soviet era Minsk, and actualizations of the Belarusian regime’s urban growth and multi-vector foreign policies since the mid-2000s. Theoretically, we elaborate on three toponymy-related mobilities: the traveling of neoliberal policy models, investment-attraction strategies that seek to benefit from transnational real estate financing, and the globally circulating thematic variants in toponymy. Our data covers the names of 185 residential high-rises and quarters. The findings unveil that the high art –evoking toponyms in the Mayak Minska and the sixteen geographically and thematically organized toponymic categories in the Minsk-Mir are carefully branded toponymic productions based on the logic of symbolic mimicry. Meanwhile, the toponymic commodification in the analyzed developments has been propelled forward through transnational state-business relations: through situation-specific alliances with the Russian and the UAE-based investors, and in particular through the Belarusian regime’s close-knit collaborations and reciprocal promotional propaganda with the Serbia-originated BK Group and its real estate business affiliates. The documented processes of toponymic place branding have been an attempt at legitimating the prevailing Belarusian political system via its achievements in facilitating urban growth and modernization; however, they have co-occurred with the heavy-handed treatment of domestic political opponents and media critics in Belarus.