The renaming of cities is an infrequent event, and it is primarily associated with a cardinal change of power, for example, the fall of the tsarist regime, the acquisition of state independence, or the desire to perpetuate a particular historical person.
Instructions
Step 1
The massive renaming of settlements in India in 1947 was the result of one of these reasons. After the Second World War, this country gained independence from the British Empire, after which a general change of geographical names began, and not only cities. Renaming in India continues to this day. So, in 1995, Bombay, a city in the west of the country, began to be called Mumbai, and the name of the city of Kolkata since 2001 sounds like Kolkata, which is more consistent with the Bengali pronunciation.
Step 2
On the American continent, renaming of cities was also not uncommon, especially during the formation of statehood in the territory of the modern United States of America. So, one of the most famous cities in the world, New York, in the seventeenth century was called New Amsterdam, when the Dutch colony was located on its territory. The city, however, eventually passed into the hands of the British, who renamed it New York.
Step 3
During the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which does not exist today, many cities that were on the territory of this country were called differently from what they are today. Ukrainian Lviv was called Lemberg, and the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, had two names at all, Austrian and Hungarian. The Austrians called Bratislava Pressburg, and the Hungarians called Dude.
Step 4
All these renaming, of course, had good reasons, but in few places they were fond of juggling city names as in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Throughout history, about two hundred cities of the USSR and Russia have changed their names. It all started with the fall of the tsarist regime, when, after the civil war, the Bolsheviks who came to power began to rename the cities, the names of which did not correspond to the new ideology. So, Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky, Perm turned into Molotov, Tver into Kalinin, Samara into Kuibyshev, Petrograd into Leningrad, and Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad. In total, more than a hundred cities were renamed during this period.
Step 5
The second wave of renaming began in the sixties of the twentieth century, when a general de-Stalinization took place throughout the country, and all cities whose names were associated with the leader of the peoples received new names. Long-suffering Stalingrad became Volgograd, Stalinsk - Novokuznetsk, and Stalinogorsk became Novokuznetsk.
Step 6
The collapse of the USSR and the rejection of Soviet ideology provoked the same massive renaming of settlements that took place after the overthrow of the tsarist regime. Sverdlovsk again became Yekaterinburg, having regained its historical name, Kalinin - Tver, but the main renaming in the whole country is the transformation of Leningrad into St. Petersburg.
