Ten years ago this week, when the Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet of Russia returned the historic name of St. Petersburg to
Leningrad, the city's citizens did not feel universal delight. A
referendum had found only 54 percent of voters in favor of the
change. The still-powerful Communist Party had asked that
''there be no mockery of the name of glorious Leningrad, hero-
city, warrior- and laborer-city.'' The newspaper Sovest
(Conscience) demanded hysterically: ''Why rename our city? So
that dead tsarism can breathe on us again?'' In reply, liberals
organized a noisy demonstration under the slogan ''Lenin's name
shames a great city!''  Everyone understood that at issue was
not simply the city's name but an important ideological symbol.
But there might have been no impetus to restore the name at all
if the memory of the old, artistically and intellectually rich
St. Petersburg had not been kept alive in the United States.  In
1703, when Peter the Great founded his city on the Baltic Sea
and named it Sankt-Peterbu