The Name's the Shame

It all began when the citizens of Starving Alive protested that they weren't. "Why should a thriving kolkhoz [communal] village bear such a degrading name," demanded the local paper, "especially on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution? Such names are references to a past that has been overcome. And there are far too many of them."

Indeed there were: some 320 towns in Byelorussia alone bore names like Roofless, Slobsville and Dirt; Abscess, Deviltry and Grief.* There was a place called Snout, and another called Corn-on-the-Foot. In the Pinsk district, such villages as Breadless, Emaciation, The Hungry One and The Thin One reflected dishonor on the good offices (and great girth) of the inventor of Goulash Communism himself, Nikita Khrushchev.

But last week all that had changed. By order of the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the shameful names had been changed to ones more rich in hope and Socialist Realism. Among the changes already being incorporated in all Russian maps and tourist guides: Delight, Berry Patch and Pinewoods; Friendship, Cherry Trees and Radiant Glow.

* Dating from Czarist times, the names reflect that Russian gallows humor that Novelist Nikolai Gogol defined as "laughter seen by the world and tears unseen."

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