Cities of the USSR, named after people, will not cause the slightest surprise of our compatriot. All of us have long been accustomed to a similar tradition in the names of administrative territories and geographical objects. We are quite familiar with the countless streets of Vladimir Lenin, the boulevards of Fedor Dostoevsky and the avenues of Vladimir Putin. In the vast majority of cases, the cities of the USSR named after people bear the names of prominent communist figures of the first generations. However, the habit of giving such names existed in Russian society in ancient times. It is enough to recall the same Petrograd or Yekaterinoslav. And even earlier, there was Vladimir, laid down by Prince Monomakh, who gave him a name. Some cities of the former USSR do not bear the names of statesmen, but representatives of culture, which is also quite a sound and good thing for the national memory. We will take a look at some interesting examples of such settlements in the cited text.
Cities of the USSR named after people: immortalized statesmen
Joseph Stalin
Perhaps the “leader of the peoples” in this sense was the most popular. The list of cities of the USSR that bore his name at different times is not impossible to count, but it exceeds a similar tribute to any other politician:
- Stalin: until 1923 Yuzovka, and since 1955 became Donetsk.
- Stalinir, and since 1961, Tskhinval (a city located in Georgia).
- Stalinobad - the modern capital of Tajikistan bore this name until it turned into Dushanbe.
- Stalingrad is a city that has become an insurmountable obstacle for the armies of the Third Reich, of course, the most famous of this galaxy.
In addition, not only in the USSR were cities named in honor of its leader. There were such in the fraternal socialist republics. So, the large Bulgarian port of Varna was called at one time - Stalin. Modern Polish Katowice was named Stalingrud, and the Hungarian city of Dunaujváros was Stalinvaros for ten years.
Makhachkala
Not everyone knows, but this Russian city is also named after a communist revolutionary. The modern capital of Dagestan bears the name of a local party leader of the revolution, Makhach Dakhadayev.
Tolyatti
But the name of this city is a kind of reciprocal tribute of respect. It is named after the Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party Palmiro Tolyatti in the year of the death of the latter. Until 1964, the city was called Stavropol-on-Volga.
Cities of the USSR named after people: memory of cultural figures
This list in its entirety is also quite impressive. In Georgia there are the cities of Mayakovsky, Rustaveli, in Ukraine Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnitsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky and other cities of Russia.
Przhevalsk, Kyrgyzstan
It is interesting, and to which list a small Kyrgyz town (with a population of just over sixty thousand) should be attributed, bearing from 1889 to 1922 and from 1939 to 1992 the name of the famous Russian traveler and naturalist, whose name, ironically, was glorified by the horse, and not a city?