St Petersburg has several museums devoted to the Siege of Leningrad. Probably the most evocative is the cemetery at Piskariyovskoye. The only tombstone is a concrete arch, yet beneath your feet lie buried half the city’s population.
With more than 6,000 people dying each day, there were neither the means nor the able-bodied capable of constructing marked graves.
It’s a monument to mass starvation. By 1942, every last rat and mouse had been caught and eaten. Meagre bread rations were augmented with sawdust. The only remaining edibles included wallpaper, since the flour-based paste was organic.
St Petersburg was only saved from non-existence by the ‘Road Of Life‘. A hazardous and improvised ice road across frozen Lake Ladoga convoyed in what supplies it could and evacuated citizens where possible.
Other siege museum sites include The Blockade and the Diorama. The picture above is a clip from a panorama by Natalia Kovarskaya and Alexei Grif. You can view it directly on their site.
