Prague street named after Soviet marshal will be renamed in October

In the past hour, Prague City Council has approved the renaming of Prague 3’s kilometer-long Koněvova Street to Hartigova Street. The name of the road will officially change on Oct 1. Numerous requests to rename the road have been made for years; they became more frequent after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

Prague 3 council and Prague’s Municipal Local History Commission both supported the name change. A survey asking selected Prague 3 residents for their views on the name change – issued before February 2022 – found that 70 percent of respondents were against the idea.

All street residents will need to exchange their identity cards (and other government documents) to reflect the new street’s name. They will also need to update their mailing address to ensure correspondence continues to be delivered to their homes. Business owners will need to do the same for their businesses. Maps, too, will become invalid and will need to be reissued. 

Ivan Konev (or Koněv using Czech spelling) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union and received the Hero of the Soviet Union award for helping defeat Nazi Germany. His troops participated in the liberation of Prague, northern, central, and eastern Bohemia at the end of World War II.

However, after 1945 he helped impose and maintain the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. In May 1955, he was put in charge of the General Headquarters of the combined armed forces of the Warsaw Pact member states. 

He also suppressed the anti-communist Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and historians also credit him with helping facilitate the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Karel Hartig was a Czech patriot, admirer of the Hussites, and the first mayor of Žižkov. "Prague 3 owes a great debt to Karel Hartig, a personality who undoubtedly left a positive mark on the history of Žižkov,” said former councilor for culture and strategic planning of Prague 3 Pavel Křeček earlier this year.