ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter addresses the post-Soviet characteristics of political toponymy as a field of scholarship and the volume’s contributions of theorizing them to the broader spatial understanding of post-Soviet transitions and their political, cultural, historical, and social entanglements reflected in place names. To contextualize the chapters, this segment of the book discusses the main stages in the development of regional toponymic scholarship. Besides, the introduction depicts the regional variations, (geo)political, historical, and some socio-cultural factors behind toponymic dynamics in the post-Soviet realm based on key political technologies of place naming, including some authentic types and those adopted by current authoritarian regimes. The introduction also summarizes the volume’s chapters.
