Moscow’s Leningrad railway station to get its pre-Revolutionary name back _ 18 years late

Moscow’s Leningrad station getting old name back

MOSCOW — Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin has lost another round in the fight over Russia’s history.

Eighteen years after the city of St. Petersburg shed its Soviet-era name, Leningrad, the Leningrad railway station in Moscow is finally getting its czarist-era name back.

The Russian state railway company said Thursday that Leningrad Station will soon be called Nikolayev Station again. It said the change would honor Czar Nicholas I, who initiated its 19th-century construction.

It’s also a concession to the increasingly influential Russian Orthodox Church, which is trying to restore imagery from Russia’s czarist past and distance the country from the officially atheist Soviet era.

The railway company said the decision was a part of an agreement with the church.