to confiscate from his colleagues K.E. Makhrovsky, who had been sent by Lenin to obtain fuel, money, fuel, train and had his transport commissariat, N.P. Alekseev, shot along with his two sons without a trial in connection with an alleged plot. The executions and the alleged plots were broadcast in newspapers in an attempt to galvanize the public. That may have been the first instance revealing the future leader's proclivity to unveiling numerous plots and conspiracies and entangling the victims into fabricated and publicized trials for agitation purposes. According to Anatoly Nosovich, a Red Army defector, Stalin "frequently remarked in arguments over the military arts [...] if the most talented commander in the world lacked politically conscious soldiers properly prepared by agitation, then, believe me, he would not be able to do anything against revolutionaries who were small in number but highly motivated." The local Soviet attempted to investigate the ongoing arrests and executions but was told off by the local Cheka. Legacy Due to Joseph Stalin's participation in the defense of Tsaritsyn, the battles for the city were among the events of the civil war most widely portrayed in Soviet historiography and propaganda. In 1925, the name of the city was even changed to "Stalingrad". A little over two decades later the city would once again be a battlefield, this time for the decisive battle of the Eastern Front of World War II: the Battle of Stalingrad. In 1961, the city was renamed Volgograd by Nikita Khrushchev during his de-Stalinization campaign. In 1937, the battles for Tsaritsyn acted as the background for Alekey Tolstoy's novel Bread. In 1942, the Vasilyev brothers dramatized the events in a two-part film The Defense of Tsaritsyn. Gallery References Bibliography Tsaritsyn Tsaritsyn Events in Volgograd 1918 in Russia