Volume 44, Number 3 · February 20, 1997
'Where the Dead Smiled'
By Aileen Kelly
St. Petersburg: A Cultural History
by Solomon Volkov, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
Free Press, 598 pp., $17.00 (paper)
On October 1, 1991, the city of Leningrad officially regained its original name: Sankt-Peterburg. This marked the end of a tense debate that began in the early years of glasnost. Supporters of the change were accused of monarchism and a lack of patriotism (it was pointed out that the name 'St. Petersburg' had been on the maps of Hitler's commanders who intended to rename the city immediately after they had taken it). Alexander Solzhenitsyn had recommended a Russified rendering: Svyato-Petrograd.
Review, 7493 words
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