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Muscovites Vote Not to Rename Metro Station Named After Bolshevik Revolutionary

The Voikovskaya metro station survived a campaign to erase the names of Soviet officials with blood on their hands from streets and squares.

Muscovites have rejected a plan to rename a metro station named after a Bolshevik revolutionary who was involved in the slaying of Russia's last tsar.

Fifty-three percent of voters in an online referendum that ended on Monday chose to preserve the Voikovskaya name for the metro station and nearby transport hubs, compared to 35 percent who supported a change, according to the TASS news agency.

Pyotr Voikov is said to have played a key role in the shooting of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their five children and family servants in a basement in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in 1918, and was also involved in the grisly disposal of their remains outside the city.

The Voikovskaya metro station survived a campaign that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to erase the names of Soviet officials with blood on their hands from streets and squares.

According to TASS, some 301,000 people voted via Aktivny Grazhdanin (Active Citizen), a website launched by city authorities in 2013 to enable Moscow's 12 million people to influence local decisions. Voting began on Nov. 2.

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