After Stalin’s death and re-evaluation of his time the city changed its name for a third time in 1961 to Volgograd, the ‘town on the River Volga’.īlatt-Nr M 38, Ssaratow, Generalstab des Heeres, 1943. Originally called Tsaritsyn the city changed its name to Stalingrad in 1925 to honour Joseph Stalin, who had been the chairman of the local Military Committee during the Russian Civil War in 1919. Stalingrad is one of the more famous cases in point.
What does change though are names, particularly names in countries which go through political or military upheaval. Maps reflect this, hardly changing apart from the style of printing or colours used. It takes something pretty spectacular, a volcanic eruption or large-scale mining say, to make a difference to the surface of the earth.
