The government of St. Petersburg has decided to legislatively formalize the status of the Leningrad Victory Ribbon

At a working meeting of the St. Petersburg government, a decision was made on legislative registration of the status of the Leningrad Victory Ribbon. The document establishes the name, type and cases of use of this symbol of feat of the residents and defenders of besieged Leningrad. Similar legal regulation is provided at the federal level in relation to the St. George Ribbon, the status of which is determined by the relevant law.

PHOTO by Ekaterina Grosheva on Unsplash

This year marks 80 years since the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade. As Governor Alexander Beglov noted, the memory of those heroic days should be preserved by the younger generation. One of the symbols of this memory has already become the Leningrad Victory Ribbon. The initiators of its special legal regulation of use were members of the St. Petersburg public organization “Residents of besieged Leningrad”.

“The Leningrad Victory Ribbon is a symbol of the fortitude and courage of Leningraders. It should have status – so that it is not tied to handbags, but worn on the left side of the chest. This is a symbol of the transfer of knowledge about war from the older generation to the younger,” – said the chairman of the board of this organization, Elena Tikhomirova, who took part in the meeting. The Leningrad Victory Ribbon was first used in 2009 in preparation for the 65th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad, and since then it has been present at all events dedicated to memorable siege dates.

Another decision of the city government is also related to the days of the siege – the installation of the monument “Blind Listener – Defender of the Sky of Siege Leningrad,” dedicated to the memory of blind soldiers of the Leningrad air defense during the Great Patriotic War. The St. Petersburg organization of the All-Russian Society of the Blind appealed to the governor with the initiative to erect a monument to the blind air defense soldiers, thanks to whom many thousands of lives were saved. “This was a unique case in world history when people with severe vision pathology were drafted into the army during military operations. They had the finest hearing. Serving in air defense units, listeners could hear the roar of engines long before the approach of fascist aircraft and warn in advance about the raid,” – Alexander Beglov said during the discussion.

The service of a group of blind people in the ranks of the active Red Army began on January 14, 1942. They were distributed among military units and sent to the disposal of the 189th anti-aircraft artillery regiment, stationed in the area of ​​the Devyatkino station, the 351st anti-aircraft artillery regiment, the 84th separate anti-aircraft artillery brigade and military unit No. 22231 in the area of ​​the Bugry state farm ”

By the end of the summer of 2024, the monument “Blind Listener – Defender of the Sky of Besieged Leningrad” will be installed in the Square of Blind Listeners on the Petrogradskaya side near house 5 – 7 on Strelninskaya Street. The square will be improved – paths will be paved, additional landscaping will be done with shrubs and flower beds, and an inclusive space for blind and visually impaired people. Nearby there is a library for blind and visually impaired people, from where blind hearing people went to the front during the war, and the People’s Museum of the All-Russian Society of the Blind.

The authors of the monument are sculptor Maria Tretyakova, deaf-blind sculptor Alexander Silyanov and architect Leonid Kopylovsky. The monument is a sculptural composition 0.9 m high, made of bronze and installed on a pedestal 1.2 m high. These parameters were chosen to ensure that the monument is convenient for tactile inspection by blind visitors. Bronze inscriptions will be placed on the granite pedestal: “To the blind hearers” and “To the blind defenders of besieged Leningrad.”

For young St. Petersburg residents, this year there will be a sports school of the Olympic reserve named after Anatoly Rakhlin, a new complex of SShOR No. 2 in the Nevsky district and an educational and sports complex for a boarding school in the Kurortny district.

In addition, the city government approved the targeted provision of a plot of land in the Nevsky district to the company NPK Morsvyazavtomatika, where the investor plans to build a workshop for the production of laser equipment for metal cutting. The investment project is recognized as meeting the requirements for a large-scale investment project; it is being implemented for the purpose of import substitution. “We are talking about the development of the domestic machine tool industry,” noted Alexander Beglov. In St. Petersburg, assigning the status of a large-scale investment project allows you to obtain land without bidding. To do this, it is necessary to invest in production from 350 million rubles. In this case, renting a land plot will cost 1 ruble per square meter for the period of design and construction. Until now, there have been no projects in St. Petersburg that meet the requirements for a large-scale investment project.

The material was published in the newspaper “St. Petersburg Vedomosti” No. 75 (7651) dated April 24, 2024 under the title “Ribbon of Fortitude and Courage.”

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