Franz Josef Land and the USSR

Factual Questions
1

Franz Josef Land is a large archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It was named in 1873 by Austrian explorers for the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. The island was subsequently claimed by Russia in 1926, but it retained its name (Zemlya Frantsa Iosifa).

Given the Soviets’ penchant for renaming cities and geographic regions with imperial or religious namesakes, especially those of German origin (e.g., St. Petersburg -> Leningrad, Königsberg -> Kaliningrad), why is it that Franz Josef Land escaped this fate? Why would nominally communist, proletarian Russia continue to commemorate a Slav-persecuting Austrian dictator with a rather large and conspicuous-looking group of islands?

2

According to this page, there had been attempts at renaming the archipelago Fritjof-Nansen or Lomonosov-Land, but these were unsuccessful.

3

Didn’t Leningrad get un-renamed after the fall of the Soviet Union? I thought that it was St. Petersburg again.

4

Indeed it was, but if my Soviet-era globes and atlases are to be believed, Franz Josef Land has always been called Franz Josef Land.