How did villages called ‘Mars’, ‘Venus’ and ‘Uranus’ appear in Russia?

Martians live among us and that’s not a joke. If you take a look at the map of the country, you’ll spot literally dozens of settlements with cosmic toponyms. Russia has ‘Marses’, ‘Venuses’, ‘Jupiters’, ‘Moons’ and ‘Orions’ in different regions. However, no space research is conducted there and they don’t prepare astronauts. So, how exactly are they linked to space?

'Solar System' on Earth

Mars village near Ruza.

Mark Nakoykher (CC BY-SA 4.0)

North-west from Moscow, near the old town of Ruza, there’s a road sign to the village of Mars; a rare driver passes it by without taking a photo. As of today, there are only a few dozen “Martian” inhabitants registered and no attractions.

Although, villages with the same name also exist in the Rostov, Orlov, Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Kaluga and Kurgan regions, as well as in Bashkiria. And all of them really were named after the planet Mars.

Venera ('Venus') district of Lipetsk.

@olessacherk

The second-most popular planet, after which settlements were named, is Venus. They can be found near Samara, Orenburg and in Mordovia. The village Venus in Lipetsk Region in the 1970s became a neighborhood of the city itself.

Several villages in Bashkiria and Bryansk Region bear the name Jupiter, while Orenburg Region has the village Uranus, Tatarstan has the village Neptune. Near Smolensk and Tula, there are villages named Moon. Chuvashia and Mordovia each have their own Polaris, too.

Dreams of space

Mars villiage.

Ivan Krivosheev (CC BY-SA 4.0)

All these settlements appeared in the 1920s-1930s, when the young Soviet state was actively trying to raise literacy among the population and promoted cultural enlightenment. Soviet local historian Valentin Prokhorov, studying the toponymy of the Lipetsk and Voronezh regions, wrote that these “cosmic” names were linked to the spread of atheistic and natural-scientific knowledge in villages.

Mars village near Rostov-on-Don, 1969.

V.Kozlov/Sputnik

One of the main topics of the period were the works of scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky about space exploration, which was romanticized and promoted in mass culture. In 1924, the popular movie ‘Aelita’ came out, based on Alexei Tolstoy’s novel about a flight to Mars and the heroes’ plan to make a revolution there. In 1935, the movie ‘Cosmic Voyage’ was shot about a Moon expedition, the script of which was written under the supervision of Tsiolkovsky, and was also very successful.

The new settlements were also named in the spirit of the time and have survived to this day.

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