Road signs reading Stalingrad may have been temporarily erected on the outskirts of Volgograd, but local residents have overwhelmingly rejected the prospect of the Soviet-era name becoming a permanent fixture.
The signs were put in place to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad on Thursday when Vladimir Putin laid flowers by the eternal flame on Mamayev Kurgan, the location of much of the fighting as well as the iconic statue “The Motherland Calls.”
But polling by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) found that two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) did not support the city reverting to its pre-1961 name which was in honor of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
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