In a small village on the banks of the Kunthi river in Kerala, a single red flag, adorned with the hammer and sickle, flutters in the warm autumn breeze. The village is called Moscow.
“My aunt and uncle live there,” says Lenin Vijayan, 39, whose home lies 11 miles from the village—and nearly 4,000 miles from Russia. Lenin is one of many South Indians named after Soviet-era figures. According to his uncle, a local communist leader, Koozhithara Chackochan, named the village Moscow shortly after Indian independence in admiration of the Russian revolution.
Kerala, widely regarded as India’s last significant bastion of communism, first elected a communist government in the late 1950s. It was during this period that the renaming of Moscow took place, reflecting the state’s strong ideological affinity with socialist principles.
Lenin Vijayan himself was named after the Soviet revolutionary, while his brother, Lemu, bears the name of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “My grandfather named me Lenin because of his ideology, his belief in communism,” Lenin tells The Times UK.
The tradition of adopting Soviet-era names persists across southern India. In Tamil Nadu, the state chief minister, MK Stalin, shares his name with the infamous Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. Ayadoure Stalin, a PhD student from Pondicherry, recalls how his grandfather, a trade union leader, celebrated the socialist ideals Stalin represented—even two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Kerala’s embrace of communism has deep historical roots. The region suffered a famine in 1942 following a Japanese advance in Burma and the loss of its rice supply. Mismanagement of this crisis left 90,000 dead and spurred a political uprising grounded in skepticism toward global markets and import dependence. Today, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), continues to dominate the state, most recently securing victory in the 2021 elections under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Soviet influence in India extended far beyond namesakes. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, though critical of authoritarianism, maintained strong socialist leanings and fostered close ties with the USSR. Soviet support was crucial during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and on diplomatic issues such as Kashmir, while Indian leaders, including Indira Gandhi, frequently featured in Soviet media.
Even as global communism waned, India’s ties with Russia have remained robust. Recent geopolitical developments, including US sanctions and tariff policies, have reinforced pro-Russia sentiment domestically. “Popular sentiment is very pro-Russia, without any doubt,” says Dr. Rajan Kumar, professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, as reported by The Times UK.
India continues to maintain strategic cooperation with Russia, ranging from military exercises to negotiations over resource transport. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit India in December—the first visit since the start of the Ukraine war.
Yet the younger generation, like Ayadoure Stalin, increasingly evaluates ideology critically. “Communists find so many problems—but under communism, the solution to the problem is never given to the people,” he reflects. Lenin Vijayan, meanwhile, sympathizes with communist ideals, shaped not only by family legacy but by personal study and observation.
Kerala’s Moscow, with its solitary red flag, remains a quiet testament to an enduring ideological echo. As the winds of history sweep across southern India, the legacy of communism—symbolized in names, villages, and politics—continues to resonate in ways both personal and profoundly political.
