According to both sources, since 2014, when he became governor, A. Bocharov has dreamed of renaming Volgograd after Joseph Stalin. The associations with this name are apparently based on his personal dedication to the Russian military and love of the Soviet heritage. A. Bocharov had no ties to the Volgograd region before his appointment as governor.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bocharov sought to achieve his goal, but Vladimir Putin’s domestic policy team reportedly opposes the idea for three reasons:
- The presidential administration considers the Stalin theme a “horse” of the Communist Party, which means that restoring the Stalingrad name would give the party a “trump card” for no reason.
- There is a political rivalry between Putin’s domestic policy czar Sergei Kiriyenko and his predecessor Vyacheslav Volodin, who is closely connected to Volgograd and governor A. Bocharov.
- Most residents of Volgograd do not want their city to be renamed.
in 2023 in February, the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center published the results of a survey, which showed that 67 percent Residents of Volgograd do not approve of the name Stalingrad. At first, A. Bočarov made it clear that he would obey the will of the public, but later he joined forces with the speaker of the regional parliament, Aleksandar Bloškin, and organized the adoption of a legal act that changed the rules of a possible referendum on renaming the city.
According to the new rules (adopted at the end of November), people living in the entire region (where it is much easier to control vote fraud) have the right to the majority of votes, Meduza reports.
What about the objections of the President’s administration? Everyone who spoke to Meduza agreed that A. Bocharov has the political means to implement his Stalingrad plan. Working in the All-Russian People’s Front coalition, he has direct access to Putin, so he can bypass Kiriyenko’s team on such issues as changing the city’s name.
“The president doesn’t really like Stalin,” said one Kremlin-connected source, but he could probably be persuaded that bringing back Stalingrad’s name “has something mystical” and “symbolic.”
However, if and when the initiative is allowed, it won’t be until after 2024 at the earliest. in March upcoming Russian presidential elections. Before V. Putin’s re-election, it is an unacceptable gamble for the Kremlin to pit Volgograd city residents against the rest of the region’s residents, thus risking protests, says a source close to the governor.
#Stalingrad #min
2024-08-20 16:49:26
