Beauty on the blood: at what cost did the Soviet government clear mines in Pavlovsky Park

Ivan Zubov

A few years ago, Vladimir Tsypin, a St. Petersburg resident who survived the Blockade, published an article about how Pavlovsk, a suburb of St. Petersburg, famous all over the world for its park, survived the war. In particular, this article provides such shocking data:

“The war brought a lot of grief and suffering to the inhabitants of the city. During the occupation, 6742 people died, of which 227 people were shot, 116 people were hanged. The rest died from a famine organized in the city. Only in the Pavlovsk "Children's Home", which was open for children from 3 to 13 years old, forcibly taken away from their parents, from December 1941 to May 1942, 387 (according to other sources 880) children died of starvation. The children's ration, which consisted of 28 g of bread and a small portion of gruel, made it impossible to survive. Children were strictly forbidden to ask for food from the soldiers. When a 10-year-old girl from an orphanage approached the German kitchen, the Germans shot her dead. The condition of the orphanage, nursing home, hospital was terrible. They could rather be considered as breeding grounds for infection, rather than as sanitary institutions. Pharmacies and hospitals lacked essential medicines.

Over 6,200 people were taken to German penal servitude, where about 3,500 people died. Thus, out of 15,000 civilians who remained in the occupied territory, over 10,242 civilians died. In addition, the Nazis destroyed more than 1000 Soviet soldiers, commanders and civilians imprisoned in these camps in the prisoner of war camp. Jews in the city and the countryside were exterminated without exception..."

Landscape penal servitude, mass grave...

Yes, the fascist invasion had a most monstrous effect on Leningrad and its environs. However, the Soviet government also had a hand in the suffering and death of its citizens. Publicist Vera Sokolinskaya writes about Pavlovsk, about which guides do not talk about on their excursions:

“They say that if you add up all the paths of the park, you get the distance from St. Petersburg to Moscow. But they made these paths (each had a drainage ditch on both sides!), They uprooted, “moved the trees away from the road” - hundreds of slaves with picks and shovels.

Paths for walking, horse riding and in carriages - for one family the largest park of the 18th century, 600 hectares. Why so many, such an inhuman scale?

The serfs fled from this landscape penal servitude, they were caught, they were instructively put on a chain.

I am especially oppressed by the “reconstruction” after the war. Yes, Anna Ivanovna Zelenova (art critic, literary critic, director of the Pavlovsk Palace Museum from 1941 to 1979) accomplished a feat, it was not for nothing that a monument was erected to her - she returned what was considered lost forever (Zhdanov said that these palaces no longer exist). But why is it not said anywhere: at what cost is this done?!

Pavlovsk park was mined, as was the burning palace. Zelenova obtained an order for priority demining. That is, instead of the collective farm fields of the besieged city! How many Leningraders still died of starvation for the beauty of the park, we do not know.

There were no sappers - they recruited Leningrad girls for army rations. Accelerated courses. They left in the morning with songs, returned silently: not all of them. Only 240 mines and shells were removed from the cellars of the palace, 3,000 were neutralized during the first winter alone.

Therefore, Zelenova refused the award, from having her dissertation credited; She devoted her life to Pavlovsk, but she also sacrificed other people's daughters. And no names, not even how many of these 15-17-year-olds died. After all, they survived the blockade, but did not live to be 18.

People in Russia are not an end, but a means for the life of the state

Cheap life in Russia. More and more of it - the state, leaders, beauty.

Beauty, as it were, justifies, they say, well, a lot has died, but here it is.

Our whole city is piercingly beautiful - and all on the bones and blood. Not for life - for admiration.

Such beauty is not for people, and people are a means to create beauty. Of course, it is better to let it be for beauty, for creation, than for war, murder, torment and destruction! But never with us has man been the measure of things, only the means.

In an endless gallery of photographs of prisoners in Auschwitz, she noted with horror that everyone stops at young, beautiful ones - what would they be for ?! And others, not young, ugly, as it were, okay. Those whose portraits are no longer a personality, mind, dignity, only animal horror - as it were, you see?

And in Pavlovsk, next to this beauty, there was a concentration camp. There, children were given 28 g of bread each, about 800 children died, and there was a brothel among the imprisoned women.

Zelenova did not allow gardening in the park (as it was after the revolution, as it was after the war in the Pushkin Hills) - the trees were preserved, and how many died of starvation ... so the majority were in the occupation, who pitied them.

Jews were shot right in the park - a memorial stone. The Germans left their cemetery in the park - it was immediately liquidated.

Suzanne Massi, the Russian-obsessed American who saved Pavlovsk in the 1990s, is no longer remembered. It was she who collected gigantic sums around the world for the restoration of the palace, for the maintenance of Pavlovsk! You won't see gratitude anywhere. Like Soros. So many times America saved Russia from starvation! We remember humanitarian aid! - vile swaggering unconsciousness.

I want to say a lot of non-trivial things about Pavlovsk, and everything is such a horror ...

The girls went to demining, singing songs, returning silently...

I will add to the history of Pavlovsk:

“The sapper squads were formed mainly from girls. They sang well in the evenings, joked and laughed, washed their uniforms in basins and dried them on ropes stretched between trees. They arranged a bath on Saturdays... Experienced mentors taught them the dangerous craft - one per detachment...” (A. Yolkina).

“The fearless girls-mine detectors, young creatures of 16-17 years old, were of the same heroic warehouse as the little Leningraders who neutralized time bombs during the blockade. Their task was to search for mines, which were then neutralized by sappers. When spring came and the soil, having thawed, became softer, the girls, on their own initiative, began to work barefoot in order to better feel where the mines were...” (S. Massey).

“Once Anna Ivanovna heard the conversation of the mentors: “Today the departure is again above the norm” - and did not immediately understand that we were talking about the death of the girls...” (A. Yolkina).

“Zelenova recalled that in the morning the girls went out to look for mines, singing songs, but they often walked back in silence and carried a wounded or killed friend on a stretcher” (S. Massey).