Levashovskaya Pustosh

Categories / City Topography/Historical Geography/Historical Districts, Localities, Tracts, Municipal Establishments
LEVASHOVSKAYA PUSTOSH, a tract of land in the vicinity of the Levashovo Railway Station (135 Gorskoe Highway), one of the cemeteries for political victims born in Leningrad, a burial place for those who were killed or died in Leningrad prisons from September 1937 until 1964 (in 1965 the Leningrad Regional KGB Department officially closed the cemetery). According to the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region FSB Department, 24,100 people are buried at Levashovskaya Pustosh (including approximately 8,000 who died during the years of "Big Terror"). The burial places throughout Levashovskaya Pustosh were discovered in 1989 by a Memorial Society search party guided by V. T. Muravsky; the same year followed the decision to landscape Levashovskaya Pustosh and recognize it as a memorial cemetery for political victims. In 1990, the territory of the cemetery was donated to the city; in 1995, then-mayor of Saint Petersburg A. A. Sobchak ordered a monument, the Moloch of Totalitarism, to be erected at the entrance to Levashovskaya Pustosh (sculptors N. P. Galitskaya, V. А. Gambarov). With the contribution of non-governmental organisations and communities, many monuments were installed on the territory of Levashovskaya Pustosh, including the Monument to the Fallen Citizens of Pskov (1998, architect V.V. Kazmin), the Russian Orthodox Monument (1993, D. I. Bogomolov), the Belarusian-Lithuanian Monument (1992, architects А. Y. Razumov, I. M. Chernyakevich), the Golubets Cross Monument (term sometimes applied to the roofed cross commonly set over a grave; 1992, architect А. N. Volchenkov), the Wooden Belfry (1993, architect А. G. Lelyakov), the Finnish Ingermanland Monument (1994, architects А. М. Kuukauppi, O. O. Novikov), the Monument to the Russian Germans (1998, architect V. R. Muratov), the Polish Catholic Monument (1993, architects L. L. Piskorsky, D. I. Bogomolov), the Norwegian Monument (1998, architect U. Akhmedov), the Monument to Fallen Jews (1997, architect E. V. Zaretsky), the Monument to Ukrainian Political Victims (2001, architect V. F. Kosenko), the Estonian Monument (1999, architects R. Fedorenko, G. Adamson, А. Tannin), and the Monument to Leningrad Assyrians (2000, architects Y. G. Dzhibraev, М. Y. Sado). Levashovskaya Pustosh holds mourning ceremonies on each first Saturday of June, and each October 30, which are days of commemoration of political victims. I. А. Flige. Adamson G.
Akhmedov U.
Bogomolov Dmitry Ivanovich
Chernyakevich I.M.
Dzhibraev Yury Georgievich
Fedorenko R.
Galitskaya Nina Paisievna
Gambarov Vitaly Abdulaevich
Kazmin V.V.
Kosenko V.F.
Kuukauppi A.M.
Lelyakov Alexey Grigorievich
Muratov V.R.
Muravsky Valentin Tikhonovich
Novikov
Piskorsky L.L.
Razumov Anatoly Yakovlevich
Sado M.Yu.
Sobchak Anatoly Alexandrovich
Tannin A.
Volchenkov A.N.
Zaretsky E.V.
Gorskoe Freeway/Levashovo, village, house 135
"Great Terror"
Memorial, a non-profit organisation
1989
1995