What's in a Prague street name

Jeremenkova has exited in its current form since 1952; before then, it consisted of two separate streets called Dvorecká (built 1906) and Pod vrstami (created 1938).

More on those in future posts, as there are still streets with those names.

Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko was born to a peasant family in Markivka, near Kharkiv, in 1892.

Joining the Russian Imperial Army in 1913, he spent WW1, until the Bolshevik Revolution, fighting in the Carpathians and Galicia.

Joining the Red Army in 1918, he fought in the Russian Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War.

When World War II started, he participated in the occupation of Eastern Poland in 1939, then, in 1940, took part in the occupation of Lithuania before being transferred to Eastern Siberia.

He was there when Operation Barbarossa started in June 1941; he was recalled to Moscow and made acting commander of the Soviet Western Front.

After a period of convalescence from an injury, he was assigned to lead the Stalingrad Front, later the Southern Front, in August 1942. In 1943, he participated in the Smolensk offensive, and, in 1944, commanded forces during the liberation of Crimea.

1944 would also see Yeremenko being sent to the Baltic, where his 2nd Baltic Front managed to capture Riga.

In March 1945, Yeremenko was assigned to command the 4th Ukrainian Front. After helping to capture the part of Hungary that was still occupied by Germany, Yeremenko’s men helped liberate many towns in Czechoslovakia, most famously Ostrava.

Here are Yeremenko and Ivan Konev – ‘star’ of the first street story I ever wrote, back in 2022 – receiving the Czechoslovak Order of the White Lion at Prague Castle in 1945: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Andrey_Yeremenko#/media/File:%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%B8_%D0%95%D1%80%D1%91%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%BE_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%86%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8_%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B2%D0%B0.jpg.

Yeremenko died in 1970.

Koněvova (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/18/prague-3-day-1-konevova/) got a long overdue renaming in 2023 (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/12/23/prague-3-day-1-version-2-0-hartigova/); it seems the various Jeremenkova streets across the country have not.

Believe me, I’d rather be reading about someone other than a Soviet general right now too, and would like there to be a few more streets named after locals who helped liberate Prague.