Maybe so. St. Petersburg is very different from the rest of Russia (so different, I thought of it as “another Russia” when living there for a time). They don’t cotton much to commies ;)
Stalin wouldn’t have shed a tear if Hitler wiped it off the map. He was very suspicious of people from Leningrad. He had Kirov bumped off, out of fear he would use Leningrad as a base to rival Stalin.
He had most of the “Heroes of Leningrad” killed after the war, because of the fact they pretty much operated outside of Stalin’s authority during the Seige.