Pin from the Soviet Union. The text on the pin reads:”Leningrad” Now known as St. Petersburg.
Saint Petersburg (previously Leningrad) is a city situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. With 5 million inhabitants in 2012, it is Russia’s second largest city after Moscow. An important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It was founder by Peter The Great in 1703.
During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, or almost two and a half years. The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history. More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. Many others escaped or were evacuated, so the city became largely depopulated.
On 1 May 1945 Joseph Stalin, in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odessa, hero cities of the war. A law acknowledging the honorary title of “Hero City” passed in 1965. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Leningrad as a Hero City the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal “for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege”. The Hero City Obelisk bearing the Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985.