137. Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery
Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery is located in the outskirts of the city, to the northeast of the city center. It's not in a neighborhood that I would otherwise have any reason to see, but I've been interested in visiting this cemetery since soon after my arrival in St. Petersburg. I appreciate the tragedy and heroism in the story of the Siege of Leningrad, which I've learned about from various sources including exhibits at the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, and the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad. Several holidays during the year (such as Victory Day) bring large numbers of visitors who come to pay their respects at the cemetery, but I found myself quite alone there on a drizzly autumn day in early October. Many of the graves had fresh-cut flowers resting atop the markers, so people here definitely still remember this dark time and honor the dead (which include some friends and relatives of the older generations, I'm sure).
Piskarevskoye is one of the main cemeteries in St. Petersburg (though certainly not the only one) where people who died during the Siege of Leningrad - both civilians and soldiers - are buried. Close to 200 mass graves contain the remains of 420,000 civilians; a relatively small number (~5,700) died from German shells and incendiary bombs, but most were killed by starvation and freezing. Another 100,000 Russian soldiers and sailors who gave their lives defending the city from the Nazis are also buried in the mass graves here, as well. People were dying in such great numbers (approximately 100,000 per month at the worst time) that few had the luxury of individual graves. The majority of the mass graves are from the particularly brutal winter of 1941/42, but many people also died later in 1942 and 1943; the Nazi siege lasted for close to 900 days.
The cemetery does include individual burials from after the Great Patriotic War, as well as some graves from the late twentieth and early twenty-first-centuries. A sign near the entrance stated that burials are no longer taking place, even though there is still available space. I wandered around the edges of the cemetery to see the individual military burials spaced in tight rows with uniform grave markers, as well as a myriad of grave marker styles spread throughout wooded areas that are slowly being consumed by the brush.
The south end of the cemetery includes a pair of pavilions at the entrance from Prospekt Nepokoryonnykh, one of which houses a small memorial museum. The museum occupies a single room on the ground floor of the building, and features photographs from during the siege. Memorable images include emaciated survivors out for a walk, people dragging the corpses of family members on sleds across snowy streets, and the food rations that city residents relied on for survival. Now that I've seen examples of the rations in three or four exhibits, I have a very good sense of what 125 grams of bread looks like (the size of the smallest daily food ration for civilians during the worst of the food shortages, a pitifully small amount of food - especially considering that most of the ingredients were non-food items like sawdust).
Outside the museum, an eternal flame occupies the center of the plaza between the pavilions. Moving north, a 480-meter path leads to a monument at the northern edge of the cemetery. Symmetrical beds of red flowers serve as a reminder of all the blood that was spilled in defense of the city, and speakers spaced throughout the mass graves play music to set an appropriately somber mood. When I first arrived, the selection was Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony #7 "Leningrad", and later I heard a series of compositions from the Baroque era. The music was a nice touch for this memorial and did an excellent job of representing (as well as inspiring) a range of emotions. The Motherland monument at the end of the path features a large statue, surrounded by relief sculptures and a large stone wall which is engraved with a variety of text, including a poem by Olga Berggolts (translated here from the original Russian):
Here lie the people of Leningrad,
Here are the citizens – men, women, children –
And beside them the soldiers of the Red Army.They defended you, Leningrad,
Cradle of the Revolution
With all their lives.
We cannot list their noble names here,
There are so many of them under the eternal protection of granite.
But know this, those who regard these stones:
Let no one forget and let nothing be forgotten.
Piskarevskoye is one of the main cemeteries in St. Petersburg (though certainly not the only one) where people who died during the Siege of Leningrad - both civilians and soldiers - are buried. Close to 200 mass graves contain the remains of 420,000 civilians; a relatively small number (~5,700) died from German shells and incendiary bombs, but most were killed by starvation and freezing. Another 100,000 Russian soldiers and sailors who gave their lives defending the city from the Nazis are also buried in the mass graves here, as well. People were dying in such great numbers (approximately 100,000 per month at the worst time) that few had the luxury of individual graves. The majority of the mass graves are from the particularly brutal winter of 1941/42, but many people also died later in 1942 and 1943; the Nazi siege lasted for close to 900 days.
The cemetery does include individual burials from after the Great Patriotic War, as well as some graves from the late twentieth and early twenty-first-centuries. A sign near the entrance stated that burials are no longer taking place, even though there is still available space. I wandered around the edges of the cemetery to see the individual military burials spaced in tight rows with uniform grave markers, as well as a myriad of grave marker styles spread throughout wooded areas that are slowly being consumed by the brush.
The south end of the cemetery includes a pair of pavilions at the entrance from Prospekt Nepokoryonnykh, one of which houses a small memorial museum. The museum occupies a single room on the ground floor of the building, and features photographs from during the siege. Memorable images include emaciated survivors out for a walk, people dragging the corpses of family members on sleds across snowy streets, and the food rations that city residents relied on for survival. Now that I've seen examples of the rations in three or four exhibits, I have a very good sense of what 125 grams of bread looks like (the size of the smallest daily food ration for civilians during the worst of the food shortages, a pitifully small amount of food - especially considering that most of the ingredients were non-food items like sawdust).
Outside the museum, an eternal flame occupies the center of the plaza between the pavilions. Moving north, a 480-meter path leads to a monument at the northern edge of the cemetery. Symmetrical beds of red flowers serve as a reminder of all the blood that was spilled in defense of the city, and speakers spaced throughout the mass graves play music to set an appropriately somber mood. When I first arrived, the selection was Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony #7 "Leningrad", and later I heard a series of compositions from the Baroque era. The music was a nice touch for this memorial and did an excellent job of representing (as well as inspiring) a range of emotions. The Motherland monument at the end of the path features a large statue, surrounded by relief sculptures and a large stone wall which is engraved with a variety of text, including a poem by Olga Berggolts (translated here from the original Russian):
Here lie the people of Leningrad,
Here are the citizens – men, women, children –
And beside them the soldiers of the Red Army.They defended you, Leningrad,
Cradle of the Revolution
With all their lives.
We cannot list their noble names here,
There are so many of them under the eternal protection of granite.
But know this, those who regard these stones:
Let no one forget and let nothing be forgotten.
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