The City’s Changing Names and Faces

This thread traces the visible remaking of Moscow and the persistence of memory beneath new names, statues, and streets.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Old Moscow Remembered

A Familiar City The Count’s Routes Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov remembers Theatre Square, Tverskaya, the Alexander Gardens, and the city’s theaters as parts of an intimate daily landscape. His knowledge comes from walking and observing. A City at Risk Political upheaval makes the familiar streets vulnerable to renaming and reconstruction. The Count’s attachment is personal, grounded in repeated encounters rather than maps alone.

Street Names Replaced

A New Map Official Renaming Nevsky Prospekt becomes October 25th Prospekt, while Moscow’s streets and public monuments receive new names and meanings. The changes make political history visible in everyday directions. Memory Continues Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich walks the renamed avenue and remembers its literary geography. A name can be altered without erasing the stories attached to a place.

Buildings Pulled Aside

Tverskaya Widened Construction for Power Moscow widens Tverskaya to accommodate official parades and replaces or moves many older buildings. Towers and broad roads reshape the city for a new public image. Disorientation Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov later watches familiar landmarks recede from a vehicle window. Modernization creates new routes while making the old city difficult to recognize.

Statues Change Places

Public Memory Remade One Figure Replaces Another The statue of Gogol is removed and a statue of Gorky takes its place. Public art becomes a means of deciding which writers and values may be honored. Private Memory Persists Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich remembers the writers whose work once shaped his life. The state can move a statue faster than it can erase a reader’s attachments.

The Old Facades Survive

Recognition in the Square A Return to Theatre Square A traveler in a ragged coat looks across Theatre Square and is surprised to find many old facades still standing. War has damaged the city, but some of its visual history remains. Memory and Change Together The city is neither wholly preserved nor wholly erased. Its survival offers continuity without promising a return to the past as it was.

1922

1930s

Late 1930s

1930s–1940s

1946