"The Return of Stalingrad" Topic

Municipal deputies in the Russian city of Volgograd voted Wednesday to temporarily rename their city to Stalingrad for a total of 10 days out of the year…

Moscow Times: link

You beat Tango to that then.

Obviously there is some curious new motivation to recall former military glories from the Soviet Era. I confess it will always be Stalingrad and Leningrad to me, purely as they truly were "Hero Cities" under those names and nothing to do with their namesakes' villainy.

Yawn. Calling up the past to bolster the here and Now. Old Russian trick

I've heard the city is mostly run by the mafia today.

Wolfhag

Mafia AKA KGB

I went to Stalingrad long before the USSR fell. Some people were really proud of their city's history, others just did not care at all. But I am told that as time went on the history became more and more important. This is kind of like ww2 in the west- in the old days no one thought twice of June 6th, and the beaches would be empty. Today it is massive tourist destination. ut I cannot blame the residents for wanting to be proud of their city's history.

Of note- when I was there (1982) the item that people were the most proud of was a telephone in the city museum on which Lenin called the city. Yes, a phone that Lenin was on the 'other end' of. They did not understand why we were slightly confused about the near religious status of that phone.

[q]Yawn. Calling up the past to bolster the here and Now. Old Russian trick.[/q]

Yes, and it has always worked. There is a reason why the movie T-34 was an enormous success in Russia. (I finally got to watch it last month and absolutely loved it, and I'm not Russian. Just a Soviet WWII and Cold War Gone Hot gamer of Austrian and Hungarian descent.)

I think it's interesting that the name of the battle has never been changed to Volgograd by the east or west. It always remains the Battle of Stalingrad.

Renaming the battle would be rather ahistorical, wouldn't it, since Stalingrad was the city's name at the time. Quite apart from the confusion it would cause researchers and scholars as the years go on, the business of renaming places creates an experiential breach between those who lived in a place under one name and those who knew it by another. I suppose in ten years' time, I will be hard put to relate my own military experiences to someone of the current decade: all the names whose real significance is as shorthand signals for geography and experience will be mutually incomprehensible.

With Nine pound round here--and that's even without (so far) penalties for using the former name. (They'll come. Have patience.)

But this seems more like Barbarian Days in Cross Plains, or renaming the Long Island Railroad the Long Ireland Railroad on St Patrick's Day. Would the place care to be Tsaritsyn three days a year?

kool – my favorite battle of all history!