4) having said that - name changing with changes of guard is pertty universal isn't it? Think of Leningrad to the St Petersburg; There are a number of Inuit names that have taken out" stalwart imperial names like Resolute bay etc....... Hari --- That name change was only supported by slightly over half of Leningraders.
There's continuity too: It's still Leningrad Oblast. Ulyanovsk is still Ulyanovsk. I used to live on Komsomol Street. Leninskii Prospekt is a huge road. Moscow metro stations: Year 1905, October, Mayakovsky, Lenin Library, Young Communist League, Marxist, Proletarian, Peasants' Field, Revolution Square, Ilich Square. A few places have changed their names; not the majority. Actually most people are in favor of changing Volgograd back to Stalingrad.
People still call each other "comrade"; the Russian expression for workstaff is"kollektif" ("the collective").
I was in Yaroslavl a while back. Two teenage girls were standing by the statue of Karl Marx in the city center. "Who's that? I think it's Tolstoy!" Hell, they both had beards.
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