The Future of the Soviet Past by Anton Weiss-Wendt

Author:Anton Weiss-Wendt [Weiss-Wendt, Anton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253057600
Publisher: IndianaUP
Published: 2021-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

6Known and Unknown Soldiers: Remembering Russia’s Fallen in the Great Patriotic War

Johanna Dahlin

ONE APRIL EVENING in 2010, Alexander returns later than everyone else to the camp at Siniavino near St. Petersburg. He usually does that, digging on his own, going places others find impassable. The rest of the group are already sitting around the table, having supper. It is dusk and getting dark: in late April in northwestern Russia that means it is about ten at night. Alexander is looking grim, hardly moving a muscle in his face as he carries a thighbone in his hand and walks off to where the search unit Ingria keeps their finds: human remains and wartime artifacts. This is the first soldier this particular expedition (vakhta) has unearthed. There is very little of him left, but there is a medallion—the Soviet equivalent of a name tag.

By examining the work on finding remains and identifying and memorializing soldiers from the Second World War in Russia, this chapter explores the symbolism of named and unnamed soldiers. My discussion focuses on the Unknown Soldier in its symbolical and memorial form, as well as those unknown soldiers whose identities have not been established due to necessity, neglect, or accident. I also look into the process of making those soldiers known. The remains unearthed by the kind of search unit Alexander belongs to can be identified primarily through medallions. Hence, finding medallions is central to the search as the most tangible link between remains and name. I discuss the significance of this link, as well as the bond being formed between members of the search units and the fallen soldiers.

The Siniavino camp belongs to the search unit Ingria, which is based at St. Petersburg State University. It is part of a Russia-wide voluntary search movement (poiskovoe dvizhenie). The national organization is simply called the Russian Search Movement. It was formally constituted in 1988, along with many other nongovernmental organizations that emerged during Gorbachev’s glasnost. Relatively autonomous units such as Ingria have been doing search work throughout Russia for three decades now. During this time, members of the movement have found the remains of nearly half a million soldiers throughout Russia. Ingria frequents the Siniavino area, which is in the Kirov district east of St. Petersburg. This area saw intense battles for more than two years as the Red Army tried to break through the German lines and establish a land connection to the besieged city. Helmets, splinters, and barbed wire still lie on the ground. Trenches pierce the forest, and the sun is reflected in the water-filled bomb craters. Less visible, often a mere few inches below the ground, are the remains of soldiers who lost their lives in battle. Here, and on former battlefields all across the former Soviet Union, lie the remains of dead soldiers, sometimes rudimentarily covered in dirt in so-called sanitary burials hastily organized by the Germans, who threw bodies into trenches as they advanced.1

But let us return to Siniavino on that particular April evening.

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