I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The long history of heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the BBC World Service and now it's time for witness history with me, Dean and Newman.

Today we go back to the Soviet Union in 1991.

The communist system was already collapsing when, in a hugely symbolic act, the city of Leningrad,

voted to abandon the name of the leader of the Russian Revolution

and to return to its historic name of St. Petersburg.

Hardly anyone, not even ourselves, believed we would succeed in changing the city's name

because the opposition was very strong.

Ludmila Narasova was a historian

and wife of the leading reformist politician in Leningrad, Anatoly Sabchak.

It was extremely important to show that the new democratic Russia

was turning away from the

totalitarianism which had been associated with Lenin's regime. It was a complete revision of history.

In 1991, after 70 years of communist power, Russia was in search of a new identity.

St. Petersburg was Russia's old capital, founded by Tsar Peter the Great, as Russia's window on Europe.

In 1991,

Ludmiller and her husband, Anatoly Sapchak,

felt they were following in Peter the Great's footsteps,

...