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Nafta (Nafta)
Mineral oil, petroleum, naphtha. Part of an oil street-name group. See also Petrooleumi. Street named in 1933, 2nd year of the great Soviet famine, sinkhole of soviet aspirations.
Leineri A.
(Aleksander Leiner, 1902-1927)
Estonian Communist “murdered by the bourgeois Estonian Security Police” according to Kivi who may well have been under a certain Damocletian influence to present a particular political correctness of thought. Soviet occupation renaming (1940-1991) of Poska J.
Lumiste J.
(Johannes Lumiste, dates unknown)
Red Army lieutenant whose claim to fame seems to be his having removed, in 1944, the black swastika on its white background from a Nazi flag and climbing to the top of Pikk Hermann to hoist the resulting red flutter of freedom for all to admire. Soviet occupation renaming (1979-1995) of Varraku.
Matrossovi A.
(Alexander Matveyevich Matrosov, 1924-1943)
Young lad, full of zeal, full of bullets. Hero of the Soviet Union, reported to have thrown himself in front of a German machine-gun bunker to allow his comrades to advance, but apparently dragged there (or out of the way) by German soldiers, and the date switched for propaganda purposes (See M. J. Broekmeyer: Stalin, the Russians, and Their War). Soviet occupation renaming (1950-1990) of Tondi. Matrosov had various places named after him: a small town in Kaliningrad formerly known as Gilija after its river (from the Prussian gilus [deep], but cf. gilùs, ditto, in Lith.), possibly a 2-street village (Pop. 179) in the Republic of Bashkortostan, and perhaps an air base on Sakhalin Island. It seems that Alex was a rather unfortunate orphan and pawn in most everyone’s lives.
