Rodina-Mat'

Rodina-Mat', originally uploaded by Stephanie A. Richer.

The Blockade Cemetery in Leiningrad, June/July 1980.

It seems appropriate to rocess photos from the Soviet era in black and white, and all scratched and grainy.

I found some old slides of mine taken there in the summer of 1980. This is the cemetery where are buried approximately 1 million victims of the siege of Leningrad (блокада Ленинграда) - some 900 days in length. It was so severe, it led to cannibalism.

The statute is of the Rodina-Mat' (Родина-мать), the Motherland.