In this essay, I reflect on a strategy of the renaming of urban spaces and of their architectural objects, which was widely used by the young Soviet state after the 1917 Revolution. On one side, renaming was an old tradition used around the world to commemorate the appropriation of new lands. On the other, Bolsheviks applied an innovative approach to the use of this tradition in order to introduce the heritage of the defeated past as an achievement of their succeeded present. I focus specifically on the destiny of St. Petersburg, the former capital of the Russian Empire, which name had been changed several times throughout the twentieth century. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 as a “window to the West,” taking the course to the Europeanization of Russia. From the start, St. Petersburg claimed its hospitality to international entrepreneurs who, since the city’s early years, had been settling on the banks of the Neva River, building factories and plants, boosting the technological development of the Russian Empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution, all private industries in Russia were nationalized, and previous owners were deprived of their rights to ownership. The state re-named each and every inherited industrial object to erase any records of their origins and their history to re-introduce them as the products of the new regime.