[KavkazUzel] Over 1,400 signatures were collected in four days by a petition against the return of the Stalingrad name to Volgograd. The petition is connected with the fact that the regional authorities have begun to study public opinion about the renaming of the city, the author of the appeal explained today.
The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 5, the first meeting of the council for the study of public opinion on the return of Stalingrad to Volgograd took place. Its participants discussed the idea of renaming the city, the regional authorities said. There are much more pressing problems in the region than the renaming of the regional center, users of the social network indicated.
On November 19, Volgograd veterans, on the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Stalingrad, proposed to Governor Andrei Bocharov to rename Volgograd to Stalingrad. The head of the region refused to fulfill the request of the veterans until the opinion of the inhabitants of the region was studied.
A member of the federal bureau of the Yabloko party, Alexander Yefimov, published a petition against the renaming of Volgograd, and in a few days about 1,500 people signed it. Alexander Efimov called this number "quite weighty" because "today in Russia, many do not believe in the effectiveness of such instruments, and some are simply afraid to sign," Kavkaz.Realii reported today.
According to Yefimov, the idea of renaming the city to Stalingrad has been around for a long time, but this is the first time that the local authorities have taken concrete steps. "And how the authorities “study” and adjust public opinion to their tasks is well known. Therefore, I decided to show that hundreds of residents of Volgograd and Volzhsky are against renaming," the publication quotes him as saying.
The petition created by Efimov is posted on the Change.org platform and is entitled "We will not allow the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad." The exact date of publication of the petition on the website is not indicated, it is noted that it was created "4 days ago", and "2 days ago" the number of signatures under it reached 1000. As of 15.50 Moscow time, the petition gained 1470 signatures.
"Over the past year, the calls of the heirs of the Bolshevik executioners to return the name of Stalin to the hero city of Volgograd, the name of a man who is personally responsible for monstrous crimes against his people, have been increasingly insistent.
Millions of people died, received long prison terms, were exiled, deported, deprived of civil rights , and mass arrests, torture, practically extrajudicial killings and unmotivated sentences (including capital punishment) have become not the exception, but the rule," Alexander Yefimov said in the petition.
In his opinion, the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad is "a direct justification for Stalin's crimes." "And an insult to the memory of millions who died in the Great Patriotic War and millions of victims of Stalin's repressions. We are categorically against such a renaming. The resurrection of the personality cult of a bloody dictator is unacceptable," the petition reads.
Recall that in August, activists of the "Union of the Russian People" demanded that the authorities rename Volgograd to Stalingrad and erect a monument to Stalin. Users of the social network "VKontakte" criticized this initiative. Historians also did not support this idea.
Volgograd initiatives to restore the image of Joseph Stalin serve to promote certain policies, but do not find mass support in society, local historians Valery Kotelnikov and Roman Skoda pointed out in September 2022. Political scientist Viktor Kogan-Yasny at the same time called the return of Stalin's images in Volgograd "a manifestation of the dense ignorant attitudes of a part of society and the views of a significant part of the bureaucracy."
In his opinion, the majority of residents of the Volgograd region do not support such initiatives. "If the people of Volgograd had not been critical of this [image of Stalin], then this [renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad] would have been done long ago," he said.
In July 2022, "Not one step back" billboards appeared in Volgograd . Chairman of the City Council of Veterans Alexander Strukov explained that this happened at the initiative of local veterans on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad after a bas-relief with this order of Stalin was installed in the regional administration. The placement of Stalin's orders is untimely and inappropriate, political scientist Alexander Saigin noted.
The opinion that Order No. 227 turned the tide of the war is one of the misconceptions about Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War, historian Boris Sokolov believes. “Stalin hoped that, under the threat of executions and penal battalions, the Red Army soldiers would fight harder and inflict more damage on the enemy.
In reality, sometimes it turned out the other way around. Fearing reprisals, commanders of all levels were sometimes late in retreat, and this only led to additional losses,” the certificate says. "Caucasian Knot" " 10 myths about the role of Stalin in the Great Patriotic War " is a quote from Sokolov's book "Mythical War. Mirages of World War II."