Victory square, Saint-Petersburg 

It is located in the very end of Moskovsky Prospekt near Pulkovo Airport – not in the central part of the city, despite this name being common in the former Soviet cities as a central city square. The nearest metro station is Moskovskaya.

On May 9, 1975, on the thirtieth anniver­sary of the victory of the Soviet peo­ple over Nazi Germany, the monu­ment was unveiled. The centre of square is graced by a magnificent monument devoted to the heroes of the defence of Leningrad during the Second World War (by Lenin Prize winners Mikhail Anikushin, Sergei Speransky, and Valentin Kamensky).

The monument faces the south, where the fiercest battles for Leningrad were fought. The centre of the composition consists of a 48-metre­high granite obelisk with the Inscrip­tion 1941-1945 in gold. The foot of the monument is embellished with se­ven meter high sculptural group called "The Victors" (a Worker and a Soldier), symbolizing the inseparable ties between the army and the peo­ple. On either side of the main stair­case, groups of bronze sculptures stand on granite pedestals.

On the left side are "Sailors", "The People's Avengers" (Partisans), and "The Build­ers of the Defences"; on the right side are "Soldiers", "Founders", and "Peo­ple's Volunteers". These four-meter ­high sculptural compositions show you the heroes of the besieged Len­ingrad.

The obelisk standing inside a broken ring is of profound symbolic significance, reflecting, as it does, the idea of breaking through the enemy blockade. The inscription on the out­side of the ring reads: "For your feat, Leningrad". The inside of the ring is faced with copper sheets on which sculptural depictions of awards pre­sented to the city are surrounded by banners. The texts from the awards made to Leningrad are inscribed in bronze letters here.

The granite steps descend to the memorial hall housed under the mon­ument where the feats of the city's de­fenders are recorded in bronze and mosaics, and are reflected in memen­toes of the war. The tragic and noble melodies of the song Holy War and Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony al­ternate with the rhythmic beating of the metronome which ticks away on the radio as it did when the besieged city was struggling to stay alive. But life went on in the city, as can be seen from the calendar of each of the 900 days of the blockade.

The chroni­cle of Leningrad's feat is recorded on the pages of the Bronze Memorial Book erected on a granite pedestal in the centre of the memorial.