Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995
- Introduction
- PART I MAKING MEMORY IN WARTIME
- PART II RECONSTRUCTING AND REMEMBERING THE CITY
- 4 The City Healed: Historical Reconstruction and Victory Parks
- 5 The Return of Stories from the City Front
- 6 Heroes and Victims: Local Monuments of the Soviet War Cult
- PART III THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
- Epilogue: No One Is Forgotten?
- Index
4 - The City Healed: Historical Reconstruction and Victory Parks
from PART II - RECONSTRUCTING AND REMEMBERING THE CITY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995
- Introduction
- PART I MAKING MEMORY IN WARTIME
- PART II RECONSTRUCTING AND REMEMBERING THE CITY
- 4 The City Healed: Historical Reconstruction and Victory Parks
- 5 The Return of Stories from the City Front
- 6 Heroes and Victims: Local Monuments of the Soviet War Cult
- PART III THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
- Epilogue: No One Is Forgotten?
- Index
Summary
Today, thirty-three years later, however repainted and stuccoed, the ceilings and façades of this unconquered city still seem to preserve the stain-like imprints of its inhabitants' last gasps and last gazes. Or perhaps it's just bad paint and bad stucco.
Joseph Brodsky, 1979“On 8 July 1945,” wrote architect A. K. Barutchev in 1946, “Leningrad met its defenders.” In the southern reaches of the city, not far from the former front line, three wood and gypsum triumphal arches provided grandiose – if ephemeral – backdrops for the crowds greeting the troops returning victorious from the West. The arch on Stachek Street near the Kirov Factory was topped with an artillery piece and adorned with silhouettes of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin (Illustration 10). The Kirov men treated the returning soldiers to shots of vodka; the women gave them wildflowers. On Obukhovskoi Oborony, an architrave set on two massive pylons declared “Glory to the Red Army.” Under the arch on Mezhdunarodnii (now Moskovskii) Prospekt that proclaimed “Glory to the Hero Victors,” Ekaterina Leonidova, a “hero mother” with at least seven children, offered the commanding general a loaf of bread, the traditional symbol of hospitality.
The three triumphal arches had been hastily constructed. Planned by groups of Leningrad architects in just twenty-four hours, they were built in a week. Nonetheless, Barutchev emphasized that they drew upon a glorious precedent.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995Myth, Memories, and Monuments, pp. 113 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006