Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to think over a proposal by Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov to rename Volgograd to Stalingrad.
“We have to think about it. Local residents decide, but in general we need to keep in mind everything related to the Great Patriotic War and the role Stalin played in the victory and try to depoliticise it,” RBC news agency quoted Putin as saying at a meeting with State Duma faction leaders on September 18.
Putin also said that one should not forget both the repressions during Stalin’s rule and the role that “this particular person played in the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.” RBC recalls that in 2017, in an interview with film director Oliver Stone, Putin called the “excessive demonisation” of Stalin “one of the ways, one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.”
In April 2025, Putin also promised to think about renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad, at which time the Volgograd airport was named “Stalingrad.”
At his meeting with Putin, Gennady Zyuganov also asked that the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky be returned to Lubyanka Square in Moscow because, he said, the people are asking for it.