What is this stop? This is the city of Stalinstadt
Nothing is sacred
After March 9, 1953, it seemed inevitable that the memory of Stalin would be perpetuated in the USSR and in the pro-Soviet socialist countries. Exactly the same as it was in all Soviet republics shortly after the death of Lenin.
But it turned out that new names in honor of Stalin in March 1953 took place only in China, Poland and the GDR ... However, there were plenty of Stalinist names that took place during Stalin's life in the toponymy of the USSR and almost all countries - his allies.
But the death of Stalin and such large-scale, albeit fleeting, mourning events seemed to suggest new renaming. Nevertheless…
Boleslaw Bierut, the recognized leader of post-war Poland, arrived in Moscow on March 6 and at a meeting with the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU proposed to organize a series of events in his country in memory of Stalin together with the USSR. By linking them "with the reunification of the original Polish lands in 1945."
According to B. Bierut, such events "will strengthen the Polish-Soviet friendship and remind of the role of the Soviet Union in the restoration of Polish historical boundaries." The Soviet side promised to think about it, but there was no concrete answer from Moscow.
Such a strange behavior of the Soviet leadership was also noted by representatives of other socialist countries. As the first ambassador of the GDR to the USSR (in 1949-1954) Rudolf Appelt noted,
“Stalin's funeral was so fleeting that there was a feeling that the Kremlin wanted to quickly get rid of the Stalinist period altogether. In mid-March 1953, the ambassadors of the people's democracies in the USSR asked the Soviet Foreign Ministry about plans to perpetuate the memory of Stalin. There was no concrete answer."
The same request, according to the testimony of a German communist, “was sent in the second half of March from the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of our countries to the Central Committee of the CPSU. There was no answer either. It was noteworthy that in the USSR after March 5, 1953, not a single object was named in memory of Stalin.”
It is also quite characteristic that already in April-July 1953, monuments and busts of Stalin were removed in about 20 small towns and almost 60 settlements of the USSR. In most cases, ostensibly for the purpose of restoration.
And people will understand...
That was a test of the reaction of the population to such actions. The reaction was limited to only a few inquiries to local party bodies, which frankly ignored these requests.
In a word, it was no accident that already from March 16-18 in the Soviet media - obviously at the command "from above" - references to Stalin ceased - until the overthrow of Beria in July 1953. Except that there were names of Stalin's cities in the USSR, and even then with brief information reports about the production successes of the workers there ...
Nevertheless, in Poland and the GDR, already in mid-March 1953, at the initiative of their authorities, renaming took place in honor of Stalin. On March 17, Katowice, the largest center of the Polish coal and chemical industry, was renamed Stalinogrud. The decision of the local administration stated that
“on the initiative of the workers of Katowice and with the approval of the leadership of the PUWP and the government of the PPR, our city, liberated by the valiant Soviet army led by Generalissimo Stalin from the Nazi occupation, is named in honor of the memory of I. V. Stalin.”
At that time, we recall, the PUWP and Poland were headed by staunch followers of Stalin's policy Boleslav Bierut and Kazimierz Miyal. It is reasonable to assume that by renaming Katowice to Stalinogrod, Warsaw was throwing a trial balloon at Moscow. But there was no official reaction in Moscow: there was only a brief message in the central Soviet media about this renaming.
German punctuality
It is believed that in the GDR only Chemnitz was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt, and even a song was sung about him. But as for the GDR, they did the same as in Poland: the first large GDR new building, the reconstructed city of Eisenhüttenstadt on the Oder, was designated for renaming.
It is there with help in the USSR in 1950–1951. a large metallurgical plant was built, and on March 18 the city itself was renamed Stalinstadt. Approximately with the same justifications as with Stalinogrud. More precisely, at first there was a decree of the government of the GDR, and on May 1, 1953, the official renaming of Eisenhüttenstadt to Stalinstadt took place.
The ceremony of giving the new city a new name was attended by the then leaders of the GDR, Otto Grotewohl and Walter Ulbricht. Apparently, in East Berlin in the period from March 14 to April 30, 1953, they expected some kind of reaction from Moscow to the above decision.
But in this case, in Moscow, they limited themselves to brief reports in the Soviet media.
... The Polish Stalinogrud "lasted" not for long - until October 19, 1956 - we recall, at the height of the events in Poland, which almost repeated the Hungarian ones in the same period. But Stalinstadt, including the central Stalin Avenue there, was not renamed until November 12, 1961.
And this, despite the increasingly frequent “requests” of Moscow, starting from 1956 about the de-Stalinization of Eisenhüttenstadt, the leadership of the GDR was in no hurry to fulfill them. The then East German authorities (as well as the Romanian, North Korean) behind the scenes expressed dissatisfaction with such unbridled anti-Stalinist hysteria in the USSR.
In Berlin, as well as in Bucharest, and you never know where else, it was reasonable to believe that such, so to speak, anti-Stalinist "line" would necessarily have a negative impact on the internal political stability of the USSR, on the authority of the CPSU and lead to a split in the world communist movement.
And the support for this position was, we recall, the anti-Khrushchev official position of the PRC and Albania. But the military-political and economic dependence of the GDR on the USSR did not allow East Germany to resist de-Stalinization for a long time.
In a word, it is quite possible to agree with Yugoslavia's Chargé d'Affaires in the USSR in 1952-1954. I. Djurich:
"Stalin began to interfere with the Soviet leadership as soon as he died."
Time has not judged yet
In the meantime, many economic and public facilities in March 1953 were named after Stalin only in Albania - in addition to the city of Stalin in southern Albania, which had this name since 1949. Having existed with such names until the end of 1990.
As for the PRC, during the life of Stalin, the streets of his name were named and are preserved in the northeast of China: in Harbin, Luishun (Port Arthur), Dalian (Far), Jilin, in the central Chinese Nanjie, in Urumqi, Gulja (Xinjiang province in Western China). And in the post-Stalin period, on March 15, 1953, in memory of Stalin, the construction of Stalin Park began in Harbin.
Five months later, it was solemnly opened in the presence of the USSR ambassador and the country's top leaders, but without the participation of Mao Zedong. This is one of the largest parks in the world - over 15 sq. km by now.
The Stalinist name of the park does not change, but it is characteristic that there is neither a monument, nor a bust, nor a portrait of Stalin. His portrait in a mourning frame was there only at the opening ceremony of the park ...
Information