Until 1924, Ulyanovsk was called Simbirsk, and the region was known as the Simbirsk Governorate. On May 9, 1924, the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution: “To commemorate the birthplace of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin, rename the city of Simbirsk as the city of Ulyanovsk and the Simbirsk Governorate as the Ulyanovsk Governorate.”
While V. I. Lenin was still alive, on November 6, 1923, at a ceremonial meeting of the Simbirsk City Council dedicated to the anniversary of the October Revolution, a representative of the 12th Infantry Command Personnel School proposed: “In honor of Comrade Lenin, rename Simbirsk as the city of Lenin, and submit a petition to the center to that effect.”
The proposal was met with thunderous applause. And the provincial newspaper Proletarsky Put even wrote: “Simbirsk has not known such an upsurge for a long time as it did on that day.”
The petition to rename the city to Leninsk was rejected by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on January 14, 1924. Lenin himself viewed such ideas of perpetuating his name negatively. The death of the founder of the Soviet state hastened the decision.
On January 24, 1924, a joint meeting of workers and employees of the Local Economy Department and Simbirskles unanimously decided to demand the swift renaming of the Simbirsk Governorate to the Lenin Governorate, and Simbirsk to Leninsk, and, in addition, the construction “in one of the city squares of a monument-tribune with a bust of Comrade Lenin.” The demand of the foresters was confirmed by a general meeting of the provincial executive committee and the city council held on January 27, the day of Lenin’s funeral. This was immediately telegraphed to the center.
In that same year, 1924, Petrograd became Leningrad, Yekaterinburg became Sverdlovsk, and Yuzovka became the city of Stalino (now Donetsk).
In those same days, yet another proposed name for the city emerged—Ilyich. The CEC agreed to the renaming, but neither Leninsk nor Ilyich suited them.
“The Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR,” wrote CEC Secretary Avel Yenukidze on March 7, “found the new name for the city proposed by the provincial executive committee, ‘Ilyich,’ unsuitable, believing that the name ‘Ulyanovsk’ would be more appropriate.”
The name proposed by the center fully satisfied the Simbirsk comrades: at the plenum of the provincial executive committee held on March 11–12, the renaming of the city and the governorate was supported. And on May 9, the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution: “To commemorate the birthplace of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin, rename the city of Simbirsk as the city of ‘Ulyanovsk’ and the Simbirsk Governorate as the ‘Ulyanovsk’ Governorate.”