RUSSIA: Safer Dead

For some time last summer a Moscow subway station stood nameless after painters hastily daubed over the signs proclaiming it Kaganovich Station. Other painters, printers and planners got busy all over the Soviet Union erasing the names of Lazar Kaganovich’s comrades-in-disgrace—Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov—from factories, village squares and streets. Towns like Voroshilovgrad and Mikoyanabad, whose namesakes are still untoppled, continued to bear their old names—but there will be no additions to the roster. Last week, in the interest of efficiency, economy, and the vagaries of internal Russian power politics, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet announced that in future no towns, villages, streets or institutions in the U.S.S.R. will get the names of prominent Russians until after they are safely dead.