A common joke among the older generation in Leningrad during the Soviet times was that they could have lived in three different cities without once moving. They could have been born in St. Petersburg, grown up in Petrograd and then married in Leningrad. Indeed, the city, in the northernmost reaches of Russia has gone through four name changes within a century, if you count the most recent reversion back to St. Petersburg after the fall of the USSR.

On this day, January 24, in 1924 the city of Leningrad was christened, in a change from the old Petrograd. The renaming came five days after the death of Vladimir I. Lenin, considered the hero of the communist party and the founder of what became the USSR.

The renaming was obviously intended to honor Lenin, but also mark the importance of the city to the communist revolution. Petrograd saw the storming of the Winter Palace, the symbolic seat of Russia’s monarchy, that marked the rise to power of the Communists. The workers and peasants of the city that clashed with imperial troops became the “Red Guards” – a predecessor to the mighty Red Army that would dominate the region decades later.