Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad, Volgograd Godonyms as the Reflection of the Twentieth Century Historical Processes

Abstract

Godonyms as the road network elements nominations are a kind of the urban environment text that is able to record various phenomena of the surrounding reality. The article analyzes the renaming and changing the nominations of the address-forming elements of Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad and Volgograd. Such transformations reflect the socio-political and social processes that have taken place in different historical periods. Linear objects, whose nominations were changed from one to four times, were identified during the comparing cartographic and other sources of 1914, 1925, 1942, 1959 and 2022. The reasons and catalyst for this process were extralinguistic: the October Revolution, the city destruction during the Battle of Stalingrad and its further rebuilding. The ideological grounds for renaming are relevant for all the city development stages. These reasons manifest themselves the most clearly when the nominations are changed between 1914 and 1925, as well as 1925 and 1942. After 1942, the number of renames is significantly reduced. The reason of this is the restoration of buildings that were almost totally destroyed during the Battle of Stalingrad and assignation to the linear objects the same names as before the Great Patriotic War. The exceptions are hodonyms that perpetuate the military formations and military leaders memory who participated in the defense of the city.