With the Red Army bearing down, Hitler demanded that the city be held at all costs, and promised a chief German commander that he would rename the city after him. There was no building left standing. After the city was liberated and the German commander captured, he and his officers were tried and publicly hanged on the main square. After the war, when Stalin had released his own latent anti-Semitism, some Jews from big cities moved to Velikije Luki, just to play it safe. Most were teachers, doctors and artists.
Residents recall that the notion of good manners reappeared.
After the public hangings, music lessons were a good change. In the 1990s, a new brand of crusaders came to Russia. For Velikije Luki, this new religion was worth a few of Stephan Batory's sieges. A local textile factory was turned into a disco, and Radiozavod, an audio recorder producer, was effectively shut down. Other enterprises got privatized, with new investors who knew that it made more sense to sell out the equipment and leave than to stay in business.