Soviets Strip Brezhnev’s Name Off City, Other Sites

MOSCOW — Soviet authorities stripped the name of Leonid I. Brezhnev from a city, town squares and a Moscow neighborhood today, showing their low esteem for the late leader now blamed for bureaucracy and stagnation.

Brezhnev, who was Communist Party chief from 1964 until his death in 1982, has come under increasing criticism for fostering complacency and cronyism.

After Brezhnev died, Naberezhnye Chelny, a city of 460,000 people in the Tatar region, was renamed in his honor. The city, whose name means “Dugout Canoe on the Shore,” is the site of the sprawling Kamaz truck plant.

Also named for Brezhnev were an atomic icebreaker, a naval vessel, a passenger liner, an army tank division, a metallurgical institute, a military academy, a nuclear reactor plant, a dam, and public squares and streets.

Perpetuated Memory

At the time, Tass press agency said the name changes were made to perpetuate Brezhnev’s memory, and eulogized him as “a true continuer” of the cause of Vladimir I. Lenin.

Since Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in March, 1985, however, he has shunned the cult of personality for which Brezhnev was particularly renowned.

Tass said today that because of citizen demand, the city of Brezhnev will revert to its former name.

Also stripped of the name Brezhnev will be Moscow’s Cheryomushki District and squares in the capital and in Leningrad.

In September, the weekly magazine Ogonyok said dozens of residents of the city of Brezhnev had written local party officials asking for a return to its old name.

‘Quite Unjustified’

“Many consider it quite unjustified that their native city . . . carries the name of the former leader of the country who never visited Kamaz,” Ogonyok said.

In the 70 years of Soviet history, cities, factories and geographical features have been renamed for members of the Kremlin leadership and other national figures.

In the most celebrated example, dozens of cities were named to honor Josef V. Stalin and his lieutenants, and were rebaptized after the dictator’s death in 1953.