Leningrad (now St Petersburg) which is Russia’s second-largest city after Moscow was renamed Petrograd in 1914, at the beginning of World War I, because it sounded less German, was then named Leningrad after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, and again became St. Petersburg in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Confusingly, the surrounding region (oblast) is still known as Leningrad.
It situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, and is one of the modern cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital, and home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world.
These fascinating pictures that captured street scenes of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1963 by Normann‘s father when he went to there from 12 to 15 August 1963, and in 1968 by Fintano from Marjorie’s trip to the USSR.
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