Yesterday I came across this collection of nostalgic photographs that bring back memories from the USSR times. Â I was too young to see some of those images in real life, but they still have meaning to me. Â Most though are as they were back then.
Yet, these are staged photographs of some every day items. Â Today I came across something much more real and something much more dramatic. Â It is again a collection of images, but in a video form. Â The video shows the staggering difference between the modern day Saint Petersburg and Leningrad (as it was called back then) during the Siege. Â As Wikipedia puts it: “It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and one of the most costly in terms of human casualties”. Â It lasted for 872 days and it took lives of millions of people. Â As per Wikipedia: 1,017,881 were killed, captured, or missing and 2,418,18 wounded or sick from the Red Army forces. Â Civilian casualties are in the numbers of 642,000 during the siege and 400,000 at evacuations. Â These are only those numbers that were verified. Â In reality that was much more.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ9LGdamU20]