Even before Peter the Great built his famed northern capital astride the River Neva and christened it with his own name, it was an old Russian custom to honor a hero by calling a town after him. With the renaming of Petrograd in honor of Lenin, the Bolsheviks picked up the custom and carried it on with such vigor that a Russian geography now reads like a combination Who's Who, Social Register and Roll of Honor.
Since the October Revolution at least ten towns, one city and three rural regions have been named for Stalin. Molotov has been immortalized in...
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