Volgograd is moving towards Stalingrad
For the first time, local authorities in Volgograd took practical action to rename the city Stalingrad.
Kommersant writes about this, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“On November 30, at a meeting of the Volgograd Regional Duma, amendments to the regional law on the administrative-territorial structure will be considered. Their co-authors were Duma Speaker Alexander Bloshkin, his first deputy Sergei Bulgakov and the leaders of four factions Mikhail Struk (United Russia), Tamara Golovacheva (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), Dmitry Kalashnikov (SZRP) and Alexey Loginov (LDPR), which virtually guarantees the adoption of the project.
The document clarifies the mechanism for renaming settlements through identifying the opinions of citizens. Among the reasons for this is the possibility of “returning to individual settlements names that were widely known in the past and present,” the article says.
At the same time, for municipal objects the issue will be resolved at a local plebiscite, but to rename Volgograd the referendum must be regional.
The publication claims that the speaker of the regional Duma, Alexander Bloshkin, “is considered the main lobbyist for the idea of renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad.”
“It was at his instigation that such an initiative was put forward by veterans and other organizations, which created a public council in December 2022. At the beginning of February 2023, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the issue of returning Stalin’s name to Volgograd “is not being discussed in the Kremlin,” after which the council’s activity decreased. However, on November 17, Mr. Bloshkin reported that supporters of the renaming “conducted independent, objective sociology and there were more and more people in favor,” the publication notes.
Volgograd is moving toward Stalingrad.