Monument to the Fallen Fighters of the Revolution

From the start of the February Revolution, the years of 1917-1918 were a bloody mess in St. Petersburg, as the struggle to fill the power vacuum created by the deposition of the Tsarist government manifested itself not only at meetings and demonstrations, but also through terrorist attacks and skirmishes on the streets of the city. This mass grave in the middle of the Field of Mars, established on the initiative of the Bolshevik faction, supported by respected author Maxim Gorky, became the final resting place for the first wave of casualties, the unnamed hundreds who died in the events of February.

Eternal flame at the Monumnt to the Fallen Fighters of the Revolution on the Field of Mars
Granite blocks with inscriptions honoring fallen revolutionaries on the Field of Mars

In 1918, the remains of fallen Petrograd workers, victims of the Yaroslavl Uprising, and those who died repelling General Yudenich's attack on Petrograd were added. From then on, the so-called "Square of the Victims of the Revolution" became a graveyard for prominent local Communists, most of whom met violent ends, including Moisey Uritskiy, first head of the Petrograd ChK (the forerunner of the KGB), and V. Volodarsky (born Moisey Goldstein, a prominent propagandist and Commissar for Printed Works). In 1919, a memorial consisting of low red granite walls, designed by Lev Rudnev, was placed around the mass graves. The Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, was responsible for the inscriptions, one of which reads: "Not victims but heroes lie beneath these tombs / Your fate breeds not grief but envy in the hearts of all / In those terrible red days you lived gloriously and died beautifully".

On 6 November 1957, the eve of the Anniversary of the October Revolution, the country's first Eternal Flame was lit in the centre of the monument. Torches lit there were used to light Eternal Flames in Novogorod the Great (1965) and on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow (1967).

Metro:	Nevsky Prospekt/Gostiny Dvor
Getting there:	Exit the metro onto the Griboedov Canal. Turn right up the Canal. Walk around the Church on the Spilled Blood and cross the Moyka River, then walk diagonally right to the centre of the Field of Mars.
What's nearby?	Field of Mars, Summer Garden, Monument to Suvorov, River Neva, Marble Palace, Millionnaya Ulitsa, Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya (Palace Embankment)