The city of Stalingrad, currently named Volgograd, is situated on a bend of the river Volga and was named Tsaritsyn before the Russian revolution of October 1917. It was an early industrial centre and its working-class population made it a stronghold of strategic importance for Soviet forces and the Red Army during the bloody imperialist-inflicted civil war and war of intervention that lasted from 1918-22.
It was through Tsaritsyn that supplies of food and oil from Baku (Azerbaijan) reached Moscow, and the railway running through the city provided communication with central Asia. The city was also a key centre for the manufacture of munitions.
Tsaritsyn was besieged three times by Don Cossacks under the command of tsarist general Pyotr Krasnov (who would become a Nazi collaborator during WW2). A further attempt to conquer Tsaritsyn was made by the tsarist volunteer army in May/June 1919, which successfully captured the city. Between August 1919 and January 1920, tsarist forces defended the city against the Reds, but in early 1920 it was retaken and held by Bolshevik forces.
Josef Stalin had been sent by the Communist party’s central committee to take personal command of the forces at this crucial turning point in the civil war, during which the very survival of the young Soviet republic was at stake, and at Tsaritsyn he commanded extremely effectively, working with Kliment Voroshilov.
After the victory at Tsaritsyn, the broader victory in the civil war, and the consolidation of the revolution, and in commemoration of Stalin’s role, the city was renamed Stalingrad in 1925.
How Stalingrad’s name became so iconic
Merely two decades after the conclusion of the civil war, the city of Stalingrad was at the centre of one of the bloodiest battles in human history, which lasted from 17 July 1942 to 2 February 1943 and was dubbed “Two hundred days of fire”.
To put into perspective how monumental this battle was, it should suffice to note that the total number of US combatants killed in action during the entirety of WW2, in all theatres, amounted to just over 250,000 men, whereas at the battle of Stalingrad alone, the Soviets lost over 1.1 million.
Fascist German losses in the battle, across the Volga-Don-Stalingrad area, amounted to some 1.5 million combatants, 3,500 tanks and assault vehicles, 12,000 guns and mortars, 3,000 aircraft, and a vast array of other equipment. Nazi general Friedrich von Paulus and the 500,000 men who remained of the Sixth German army were all encircled and captured.
The crippling defeat at Stalingrad dealt a strategic blow to the Nazis’ plans, decisively turning the tide of the war and marking the beginning of their retreat to Berlin. Before their defeat, however, they managed to inflict total destruction upon the city of Stalingrad. According to President Vladimir Putin, the city and its environs “had to be restored literally from scratch by the whole country”, because “there was practically not a single tree, not a single building left intact” in Stalingrad by February 1943.
Without doubt, the Soviet triumph at Stalingrad made the city famous the world over. It became a symbol of defiance and heroism that lives to this day in the hearts of millions of people – the essence of proletarian internationalism and a reminder of the ultimate victory of socialism over capitalism.
Renaming to Volgograd
Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961 as part of revisionist Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinisation’ campaign. Khrushchev’s clique, representing the interests of capitalist and petty-bourgeois remnants at home and imperialists abroad, wanted to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and planned economy because they aimed to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.
Like Trotsky, they consistently worked in lockstep with the propagandists and politicians of the imperialist west. It was no coincidence that barely a year after Khrushchev took power, in 1954, the Soviet Union applied to join Nato as well as inexplicably transferring Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
Perhaps the worst crime of all was giving amnesty to hundreds of thousands of Nazi collaborating terrorists (‘partisans’) who had kept fighting against socialist rule in eastern Europe after the war (with logistical, military and financial support from British and US secret services).
The burying of Stalin’s legacy was an attack on Marx, on Lenin and on socialism. It was also an attack not only on the Soviet people and their class rule, but on the oppressed people of all nations. It came with the deliberate concealment of the lessons that had been learned about imperialism by the collective forces of world socialism.
Under Khrushchev, the road to capitalism was being paved with liberal-pacifist social-democratic phrases and ideas about peaceful coexistence and rapprochement with the west. The Khrushchevite flunkeys desperately wanted to dine in NYC and shop at Harrods. They wanted a seat at the imperialist table and to be praised by the English-language media. To achieve these goals, there was no level to which they would not stoop.
By dividing the Soviet people and the global communist movement, by weakening the Soviet Union through so many self-destructive policies, Khrushchev increased the chances of war breaking out on Soviet soil. His policies are what lead to the Sino-Soviet split and later to the Nato encroachment to surround and strangle Russia.
Thankfully Khrushchevism reached a dead end in 2022, having led Russia directly into the very war it purported to prevent. In today’s Russia there is growing momentum to undo all the lies, all the damage, and all of the weakness caused by the treacherous ideological poison that this rotten class has been spreading in the Soviet sphere over the last half century.
Momentum grows behind the demand to bring back Stalingrad
With the escalation of war against Russia via Ukraine in February 2022, a fundamental change has taken place. The stubborn insistence with which the Russian bourgeoisie previously followed the collaborationist line set by Nikita Khrushchev, the sheer naivete with which it sought acceptance at the table of the imperialists as equal ‘partners’, has been irrevocably shattered.
Since 2022, the economic and political line of Stalin and his government in many spheres, from planned production (at least of all those industries considered vital to national interests in a time of war) to genuinely fraternal relations with other countries against imperialism, has been proven correct in the eyes of many who previously had not understood their significance, and this has had important repercussions.
On the one hand, the collective west is trying harder than ever to manipulate historical truth and impose its imperialist version of history, drawing on Nazi propaganda and ideology to increase the effectiveness of its war effort.
On the other hand, the Russian Federation, to counter this threat, is delving deeper into her past and drawing on the glorious social and military achievements of Stalin’s USSR, in particular its defeat of the Third Reich and its success in holding the entire imperialist camp at bay.
Even though President Putin emerged from Khrushchev’s clique, the class of Russian national bourgeois whom he represents has been shifting its position throughout the first few decades of the 21st century, not out of any fondness for communism, but because the imperialists have left them with no choice.
To put it simply, they have moved Russia from being a reserve and subservient ally of imperialism against the world communist movement into an alliance with the world anti-imperialist and communist camp against Nato and the gobal imperialist camp.
The war in Ukraine marks the point of no return in this process. It is because of the aforementioned processes that the legacy of Stalin is being increasingly turned to and upheld, and some key aspects of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation programme are being exposed and reversed.
On 2 February 2023, the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory at the battle of Stalingrad, President Putin assigned federal status to the anniversary by presidential decree and personally attended the ceremony, where he spoke at length. Among other things, he said:
“Stalingrad has become an eternal symbol of the invincibility of our people.
“Our moral duty – first of all to the victorious soldiers – is to cherish and fully preserve the memory of this feat, pass it on to future generations, not allow anyone to belittle or distort the role of the Battle of Stalingrad in the victory over nazism, in the liberation of the whole world from this monstrous evil.”
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Russian state duma, published the following message on his Telegram channel on 30 April 2025:
“Dear friends, yesterday in Volgograd, together with colleagues from other countries, we discussed at an international forum the need to protect historical memory and counter attempts to distort the truth about the Great Patriotic War.
“While we were in Volgograd, the topic of the battle of Stalingrad, which became the turning point that determined the outcome of the Great Patriotic War, did not leave our lips. Heroically defending our country, 1,130,000 Soviet soldiers and officers died at Stalingrad.
“Our President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has decided to assign the historical name ‘Stalingrad’ to Volgograd international airport. This is extremely important and correct. Stalingrad is a symbol of the courage, steadfastness, indomitable will and dedication of the Soviet people.”
In a video released by Russian news agency Tass on the same day, and reported on by Ria Novosti, viewers can see a dialogue between President Putin and a couple of local girls.
Girl 1: I want to thank you from all the people of Stalingrad for changing the name of our city.
Putin: We only renamed the airport.
Girl 1: Oh, right.
Putin: You think that the city should be renamed?
Girl 1: Yes, because it is linked with history. We would be very happy.
Putin: OK. In many European countries no one changes the names of streets and prospects despite our bad relations.
Girl 2: I will never forget when beneath the Reichstag, on May ninth [Victory day], a person asked me “Where are you from?” and I replied “Volgograd”. That person stared at me and asked “Stalingrad?”
Putin: I understand. We need to ask the residents so they can decide.
From just this short conversation, there are two interesting takeaways. The first is that Putin mentions many European countries not changing street names despite bad relations with Russia. In other words, he is criticising the decision made in 1961 to change the name from Stalingrad to Volgograd, as part of Khrushchev’s ‘bad relations’ with the memory of Stalin.
The second takeaway is that Putin’s government has changed the name of the airport from Volgograd to Stalingrad and shows an understanding of the benefits that would come with restoring the city’s iconic name of Stalingrad.
More pressure will no doubt be brought to bear by the second-largest political party in the Russian Federation, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). At the party’s 19th congress a resolution was approved on the 23 July that deemed it necessary, among other things, “to call on President Putin of the Russian Federation to return to the city of Volgograd and the Volgograd Oblast their heroic names Stalingrad and the Stalingrad Oblast” because “the decisions on renaming them were ungrounded. They do not contribute to preserving the historical memory and the solution of Russia’s strategic tasks of defeating neo-nazism, protecting sovereignty and national security.”
Anyone flying to or from Volgograd today, will be flying into or out of Stalingrad airport. As for whether the city and oblast will be renamed, it remains to be seen, but recent events and statements from Russian’s political representatives point to this being a necessary step sooner rather than later.
The plain fact is that, whether it wants to or not, today’s Russian national bourgeoisie needs to draw on the legacy of the USSR if it is to survive the multifaceted war now being waged against it by the entire imperialist camp. To ensure its survival and victory, it needs to resuscitate many crucial aspects of the Soviet Union’s agricultural, industrial and scientific base, its central planning, its military capabilities, its educational excellence and its fraternal relationships with other nations.
To that extent, the Russian Federation has objectively become a reserve of the revolutionary forces worldwide.
Resuscitation of Stalingrad’s name, with all its associated proletarian glory and socialist traditions, cannot but hold deep significance at a time when global capitalism is reeling under the pressure of its deepest-ever crisis of overproduction.
It would seem that not all their rewriting and weaponising of history, culture and religion can prevent the spectre of communism once more looming over the bloodsucking imperialist bourgeoisie.
