Vladimir Putin adds weight to push to restore city’s name to Stalingrad

For more than 300 years, the city of Volgograd was known as Tsaritsyn. It was dubbed Stalingrad in honour of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for 26 years, but then his successor Nikita Khrushchev dropped that name as part of his campaign to dismantle the personality cult of the former dictator.

Now the city may revert to Stalingrad after president Vladimir Putin proposed holding a referendum to change the name to cash in on a wave of second world war patriotism over eastern Ukraine.

When asked by a Soviet veteran during D-day commemorations in Normandy on Friday, Putin promised to help the city's residents vote on bringing back the Stalingrad name. "It wasn't me who cancelled that," Putin said.

On Sunday, Russian Orthodox church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin also spoke out in favour of a referendum.

"The word Stalingrad already has a life of its own, independent of the name Stalin. It is associated with the victory in a famous battle, with a certain part of our history," Chaplin was reported as saying by news agency Interfax.

Several other prominent politicians, including deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, were quick to back the name change. But Putin's support is what is likely to move the initiative forward in Volgograd, one of Russia's largest cities with more than a million people.

Last year, several politicians called for a referendum on the name Stalingrad on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the battle there, which stopped the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union and stands as one of the bloodiest battles of all time, with an estimated two million casualties.