One of the main arguments of the supporters of the renaming of the Ural capital of Sverdlovsk into Yekaterinburg, which took place in September 1991, was the need to return the historical name. Although, as it turned out, the city was originally named completely differently.
By order of Peter the Great
"The city is ancient, the city is long, the name of Catherine", - as the famous Ural chansonnier Alexander Novikov sings, appeared on the banks of the Iset on November 18, 1723. On this day, in the shops of the iron-making (metallurgical) plant built by the Decree of Peter I, the workers made the first launch of their battle hammers. It is curious that the official City Day in Yekaterinburg is traditionally celebrated not in November, but on the third Sunday of August.
Another interesting detail: the construction of the first metallurgical plant in the region turned out to be a "stumbling block" in relations between its initiator Vasily Tatishchev and the Tula industrialist Nikita Demidov, previously sent by Peter to develop the Ural lands rich in ore. From disgrace Tatishchev and the future city-forming plant was saved by the tsarist inspector, the Dutchman William de Gennin. Thanks to his support, the enterprise was nevertheless built.
It was Tatishchev and de Gennin who founded a new Russian city in the Urals, naming it in honor of Peter's wife and future Empress Catherine I. Moreover, the first option, which existed for three years, was Yekaterininsk (Katerininsk). There is also a version, especially zealously supported later by representatives of the ROC, the Russian Orthodox Church, that the choice of the name was influenced by the patronage of mining and metallurgy by St. Catherine.
War with Germany
For the first time, they started talking about changing the name of Yekaterinburg, as well as, by the way, of St. Petersburg, at the beginning of the First World War, in which Germany was the main enemy for Russia. Because of this, the country raised the issue of "Russification" of cities named after the German ones. Among other options proposed by the public, there was the same Yekaterininsk, as well as Yekaterinouralsk, Yekaterino-Petrovsk, Yekaterinogornozavodsk, Grado-Isetsk, Iseto-Grad and others.
By analogy with Petrograd, as in 1914, at the request of Nicholas II, St. Petersburg began to be called, Yekaterinograd was also proposed. But the Ural activists did not have time to change the name under the tsarist regime, they were prevented by the revolution and the Civil War. During the latter, Yekaterinburg repeatedly passed from hand to hand and became famous throughout the world as the city in which the last Russian tsar and his family were shot.
Sverdlovsk
It came to the legal renaming of the "name of Catherine" in the fall of 1924. On October 14 this year, the city council made a decision to name Yakov Sverdlov in Yekaterinburg. In the revolutionary 1905 and 1917, this man was one of the leaders of the Bolshevik party organization in Yekaterinburg and the entire Urals. On November 6, the decision of the deputies was approved by the Resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which was led by Sverdlov after the October Revolution.
In memory of one of the "fiery revolutionaries" who died in 1919, the Sverdlovsk region, which has not yet been renamed, was later named. And in the city itself, now the capital of the Ural Federal District, there is still Sverdlov Street. There is also a memorial museum of Yakov Mikhailovich in Yekaterinburg, as well as a granite monument to the first "president" of Soviet Russia, erected in 1927 opposite the present theater of opera and ballet.
Passion for Yekaterinburg-2
Once again, the city of Tatishchev and de Gennin became Yekaterinburg at the very end of Soviet history, on September 23, 1991. Moreover, the decision of the Sverdlovsk deputies of September 4 of the same year did not find unanimous support among the population. Moreover, the return of the pre-revolutionary name was opposed by a significant part of the residents who managed to fall in love with Sverdlovsk and did not want to have anything to communicate with either Catherine (Martha) Skavronskaya or with the mythical saint.
As in the First World War, there were also alternative names. Among others, it was proposed, in particular, Uralgrad, Isetsk, and also - in honor of the actual founders of the city - Tatishchev and de Gennin. Nevertheless, the majority of the deputies voted for Yekaterinburg. And the largest city newspaper, abbreviated as "Vecherka", the next day came out with the headline on the front page "Goodbye, Sverdlovsk, hello, Yekaterinburg!"
By the way, later the local composer Yevgeny Rodygin came up with the following quatrain for his song "Sverdlovsk Waltz":
“If you have not been to Sverdlovsk, and then suddenly visited, Be surprised that the city is called either Sverdlovsk or Yekaterinburg, This fact exists indisputably, but the people are not worried at all, He always pulls, as if on a pile, from the heart sings: ….
