Renaming Leningrad to Petrograd?

Considering "now" he lives in Leningrad he wanting to live in Saint-Petersburg's very hilarious in hindsight :p
one of my favorite old jokes:

A delegation of foreign communists came to see a Moscow kindergarten. Before they came, the kids were instructed to answer every question by the visitors with just one sentence, "In the USSR everything is the best in the world."

The visitors came and asked their questions:

"Children, do you like your kindergarten?"
"In the USSR everything is the best in the world!" the kids shouted.

"And what about the food you get?"
"In the USSR everything is the best in the world!"

"Do you like your toys?"
"In the USSR everything is the best in the world!"

At that, the smallest boy in the group started crying.

"Misha, why are you crying? What happened?"
"I want to live in the USSR!"
 
If, however unlikely, German had 'won' what would Russian Cities be renamed, even if they were reduced to 'Towns'!?
 
Why no love for the people who truly kickstarted the industry there? Nobelgrad would be my choice for Baku, as long as we are naming Russian towns after people.

Russian towns were named after people since there were Russian towns - most of the medieval ones certainly are. But it was basically a petrochemical joke.

As for the dude in the joke who wanted to live in Sankt-Peterburg, he got his wish, though I hope he never leaves the city proper because it's in Leningrad oblast. Also, if you've grown up with Sverdlovsk, changing back to Yekaterinburg is....challenging. People even contract it to Yeburg in colloquial speech.
 
Why not rename it to the name it had prior to St Petersburg, Nyen
Because before Peter the Great built a city there, it was an almost uninhabited chunk of marsh. There were probably a few hamlets, but nothing significant.

Googles
Ah "Nyenschantz" a Swedish fort in Swedish Ingria on the site of modern St. Petersburg.

Not even Russian, then, eh?
 
Thanks for all the insightful posts. Would this have been more likely if there had been some Russian-German diplomatic conflict during or immediately after the dissolution of the USSR? Not sure what it would be exactly (Kaliningrad doesn't seem to be an issue that either party would get worked up about), but that's my best guess as to how the name Petrograd could be resurrected. Maybe with the city being renamed by the government, with no referendum.
 
Russian towns were named after people since there were Russian towns - most of the medieval ones certainly are. But it was basically a petrochemical joke.

Oh, I got the joke. I just want to root for Russians remembering and commemorating foreigners that have had a big positive impact in their country, as an antidote to the currently fashionable historical navelgazing and seeing foreign influence as a mainly bad thing. Having a town named after the Swedish people who made the Russian oil industry big would be reasonable, seeing as they still have a city named after an Italian Communist who helped develop the Soviet car industry.
 
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Because before Peter the Great built a city there, it was an almost uninhabited chunk of marsh. There were probably a few hamlets, but nothing significant.

Googles
Ah "Nyenschantz" a Swedish fort in Swedish Ingria on the site of modern St. Petersburg.

Not even Russian, then, eh?

No, because if we had won the battle of Poltava St-Petersburg would be a Russian city on Swedish territory. Ingria was not formally Russian until the peace in 1721, before that it was Swedish territory that Russia occupied
 
If, however unlikely, German had 'won' what would Russian Cities be renamed, even if they were reduced to 'Towns'!?

Not to Russian Empire names, definitely. Knowing the Nazis, they'll dig up as many Germanic names from their list of Teutonic Knight grandmasters, dukes and kings of Prussia, or Viking and Gothic leaders and change them appropriately. The Romanov royal family and Russo-German nobles, no matter how German their bloodline is, would have been considered dirty Slavs and race traitors regardless, and hence disqualified for renaming.
 
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