Survivor of the Siege of Leningrad revisits her St. Petersburg apartment…70 years later

Maxim Kosmin, a blogger and founder of the online community Old Fund, photographs old communal apartments in St. Petersburg. Crumbling grandeur, beauty, unique 19th-century furniture set against a backdrop of decay – Russia Beyond has already shown you Kosmin’s works. This time, however, he’s explored something altogether more personal.

He took his grandmother to a communal apartment she lived in as a child. She stayed there during WWII and survived the Siege of Leningrad before moving out with her parents in 1947. Almost 70 years later she made an emotional return.

Remnants of the past

As Kosmin wrote on his Instagram, he found the apartment with her help (she perfectly described the layout of the rooms) and the current inhabitants were kind enough to let them in.  

“We walked by the kindergarten she went to before the war. On April 24, 1942, a German bomb exploded near the kindergarten killing 32 kids. My granny was at home at that moment, 150 meters away from the explosion,” Maxim posted.

He also describes how she walked along the corridor in the communal apartment pointing at doors and remembering people who used to live there. Of course, everything has changed since her time in the building.

Here are some more photos from Kosmin’s blog where he shows contrasting buildings and interiors in St. Petersburg:

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