Leningrad

Categories / City Topography/Toponymy
LENINGRAD, the official name of St. Petersburg as of 26 January 1924, initiated by Petrograd Soviet and adopted by the decree of the Second Congress of the Soviets of the USSR after the death of V.I. Lenin; the actual initiator of the decree was G.E. Zinovyev, the chairman of Petrograd Soviet of that time. On 12 June 1991, a public opinion poll was carried out; the majority of the citizens who took part in the poll supported the return of the historical name to the city. On 6 September 1991, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a law renaming Leningrad as St. Petersburg.

A. D. Margolis.

LENINGRAD, the name adopted by a number of journals issued in the city at various times. 1) A biweekly illustrated literary-artistic and socio-political journal published in 1922-25 (the first issue was titled Petrograd, all the rest came out under the title Leningrad, starting with № 2 of 1924). The editorial board was situated at 14 Sotsialisticheskaya Street. Among the contributors of the journal were A.S. Grin, S.A. Esenin, N.A. Klyuev, M.A. Kuzmin, O.E. Mandelstam, V.V. Mayakovsky, B.L. Pasternak, F. Sologub, A.N. Tolstoy, N.S. Tikhonov et al. The staff of the art department included I.Y. Bilibin, I.I. Brodsky, B.M. Kustodiev, K.A. Somov et al. 2) A monthly literary-artistic and socio-political journal, issued by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura State Publishing House in 1930-32; from 1933 to 1941, it was published under the appellation Literaturny Sovremennik. The editorial office of the journal was quartered in the Book House. At various times the editorial board of the journal included A.A. Prokofyev, M.M. Zoshchenko, Y.N. Tynyanov, M.E. Kozakov et al. The journal published the works of O.F. Berggolts, Y.P. German, S.M. Gorodetsky, M. Gorky, N.A. Zabolotsky, Zoshchenko, V.A. Kaverin (Two Captains), Kozakov, A.I. Kuprin, A.P. Chapygin, Tynyanov, V.M. Sayanov, O.D. Forsh, N.K. Chukovsky, E.L. Schwarz, V.S. Shefner, V.Y. Shishkov (Emelyan Pugachev) et al.; the literary-critical department published works of B.M. Eichenbaum, B.G. Reizov. B.S. Meylakh et al. 3) A bi-weekly literary-artistic journal issued in 1940-46, the publication of Leningrad Department of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Leningrad was the successor to Rezets published from 1924 to 1939. The regularity of the latter publication varied, sometimes biweekly, sometimes weekly. Originally it was the supplement to Krasnaya Gazeta, developing into the organ of Leningrad Department of the Union of Writers of the USSR in 1935. Rezets published amateur proletarian writers, though later on some eminent writers and critics contributed to the journal. The editorial offices of the Rezets journal were located at 1 Twenty-Fifth of October Avenue (present-day Nevsky Prospect), 76 Fontanka River Embankment etc. The first editor-in-chief of the Leningrad journal was S.L. Gorsky, succeeded by V.M. Sayanov in 1942, who was superseded by B.M. Likharev as of the end of 1944. The editorial office of the journal was quartered at 18 Voinova Street (present-day Shpalernaya Street). The contributors of the Leningrad journal mostly consisted of Leningrad writers; it published various works in translation, memoirs, reviews, academic papers in literary studies etc. The journal was closed down in August 1946 by the resolution of the Organisation Bureau of the Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) Concerning the Zvezda and the Leningrad Journals. The reasons for the suppression of the journals given in the decree (reversed only in October 1988) consisted of "a lack of commitment to the official ideology" and the publication of "vapid and inferior literary material"; the latter, among other things, included the works by A.A. Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, M.L. Slonimsky et al.

D. N. Cherdakov. Lenin (real name Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich
Zinovyev Grigory Evseevich
1924
1991