The memorial was located, rather fittingly, on the aptly named Avenue of the Unvanquished (Проспект Непокорённых), and is dedicated mostly to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad. The cemetery contains the tombs of approximately 500,000 Russians in 186 mass graves who died during WWII in siege of Leningrad. The infamous Leningrad siege was one of the most devastating times in Saint Petersburg’s history. In fact, there has been no city in any part of the world that gave so many lives for victory as Leningrad did. For over 2 and a half years the Nazis kept Leningrad under siege, resulting in the deaths of more than a million people during the siege and countless tens of thousands during the evacuation.
What is there to be said in a place of such serene beauty and grief? I paced the vast green plains and the graves, and looked carefully at each memorial plaque, as if remembering, and saying their names and their birth dates was enough to commemorate their memories and the people they were. Here lay Dmitriy; this was Evgeniy's grave; Ilya; Nikita; Sergey; Kirill; Mikhail; Vasiliy; Andrey; and so, so many others.
What struck me most was that most of them were born in 1918, and died in 1943. They were 25 when they died. Most of the graves I saw were young men in their early twenties, boys whom in another life, I probably would have been friends with, and gone out with for drinks.
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| Avenue of the Unvanquished |
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