Epilogue: No One Is Forgotten?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
Summary
If we agree that the symbols of the preceding epochs, including the Soviet epoch, must not be used at all, we will have to admit then that our mothers' and fathers' lives were useless and meaningless, that their lives were in vain. Neither in my head nor in my heart can I agree with this.
Vladimir PutinI think they don't remember enough today about the people who survived the siege. It's only because of this anniversary that they remembered about us and sent us congratulation cards.
Nina Konstantinovna, pensioner, twelve years old when the blockade beganThings, events that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies may make us stop in wonder.
Jorge Luis BorgesPost-Soviet Petersburg remains a city in which multiple and contested memories, myths, and possible futures coexist. Successive waves of renamings have left eclectic traces on the map of St. Petersburg, where Palace Square exists alongside both the revolutionary [Jean Paul] Marat Street and the post-Soviet Academic [Andrei] Sakharov Square. The Bronze Horseman and Vladimir Lenin on an armored car continue to stand in salute on opposite sides of the Neva. The monument on the Field of Mars that commemorates the victims of the old regime has been joined by a quintessentially Petersburg monument to the victims of the Revolution: émigré sculptor Mikhail Chemiakin's pair of sphinx-skeletons.
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- The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995Myth, Memories, and Monuments, pp. 287 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006