Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at 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 Narosova was a historian and wife of the leading reformist politician

in Leningrad, Natoly Sapchak.

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 1990 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 Zah Peter the Great as Russia's window on Europe. In 1991, Ludmiller and her husband, Anatoly Sabchak, felt they were following in

Peter the Great's footsteps when they suggested a referendum on changing the city's name

back to St. Petersburg. They too wanted to develop a closer relationship between

Russia and European countries.

The blood of many Russian people was given for this city.

...