ected in favor of a more pompous Stalinist architecture. Moving the city center further from the border with Finland, Stalin adopted a plan to build a new city hall with a huge adjacent square at the southern end ofMoskovsky Prospekt which could thereby become a new main street of Leningrad. However, after the war, the Soviet-Finnish border was moved to the north, and Nevsky Prospekt with the Palace Square maintained the functions and the role of a city center.
In December 1931, Leningrad was administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District,Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which became the pretext for the Great Purge.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by German forces. The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944.The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated.
On May 1, 1945 Joseph Stalin, in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odessa,hero cities of the war. However, a statute bestowing the honorary title of 'Hero City' was only officially adopted on May 8, 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era. 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
