Why were cities in Russia renamed so often?

Toponyms were also changed en masse in the 1920s-1930s, after the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War. All names linked to the tsarist regime were changed; cities received their new names in honor of the founders of Marxism and other Soviet figures.

Here’s some examples:

Yekaterinograd → Marksshtadt (1920) → Marks (1942)

Yekaterinodar → Krasnodar (1920)

Yamburg → Kingisepp (1922, in honor of the Estonian revolutionary)

Yekaterinburg → Sverdlovsk (1924)

Simbirsk → Ulyanovsk (1924)

Petrograd → Leningrad (1924)

Tsaritsyn → Stalingrad (1925)

Tver → Kalinin (1931)

Vladikavkaz → Ordzhonikidze (1931, from 1944 to 1954, it was renamed to Dzaudzhikau)

Novokuznetsk → Stalinsk (1932)

Nizhny Novgorod → Gorky (1932)

Vyatka → Kirov (1943)

In 1945, East Prussia was annexed by the USSR as a result of World War II.

Königsberg → Kaliningrad (1946)

Pillau → Baltiysk

Tilsit → Sovetsk

In 1948, the names of the cities of the Karelian Isthmus were changed to secure the results of peace treaties with Finland.

Antrea → Kamennogorsk

Kexholm → Priozersk

Koivisto → Primorsk

In 1956, the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin was officially denounced.

Stalingrad → Volgograd (1961)

Stalinsk → Novokuznetsk (back again!)

This tendency also affected toponyms that received their names from his associates.

Molotov → Perm (this name was restored in 1957)

Voroshilov → Ussuriysk

Chkalov → Orenburg

The city of Gzhatsk, in the vicinity of which the first astronaut in the world was born, was renamed Gagarin in 1968, right after the death of Yuri Alekseevich.

During perestroika (1985-1991), many cities recovered their historical names.

Leningrad → St. Petersburg

Sverdlovsk → Yekaterinburg

Kuybyshev → Samara

Gorky → Nizhny Novgorod

Kalinin → Tver

By the way, Leningrad Region and Sverdlovsk Region were not renamed. In 1990, Ordzhonikidze recovered two names at once – Vladikavkaz in Russian and Dzaudzhikau in the Ossetian language. 

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