Piskarevskoe Cemetery

a memorial cemetery in Leningrad, the main site of mass burials of Leningraders who died during the city’s blockade in 1941 and 1942 and of soldiers who perished on the Leningrad Front during the Great Patriotic War (1941–5).

Piskarevskoe Cemetery is located in northeastern Leningrad, on the Vyborg side. It contains the mass graves of 470,000 persons, predominantly civilians. On May 9, 1960, a memorial ensemble was unveiled at the cemetery; the focal point of the memorial is a bronze sculpture symbolizing the motherland. The monument was designed and executed by architects A. V. Vasil’-ev and E. A. Levinson and by sculptors V. V. Isaeva and R. K. Taurit (Motherland and the reliefs on the butt ends on the flanking walls), M. A. Vainman, B. E. Kaplianskii, A. L. Malakhin, and M. M. Kharlamova (high reliefs on the central stela). Verses by the poets O. F. Berggol’ts and M. A. Dudin appear on friezes on the pavilions and on the central stela.

At the entrance to Piskarevskoe Cemetery there are two pavilions housing museum displays devoted to the heroic defense of Leningrad; alongside them there is an eternal flame on a granite platform. Solemn ceremonies of mourning are held in the cemetery on days of remembrance of the Great Patriotic War. Mournful music is played in the cemetery.