Participants in the commemorative event dedicated to the 79th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
On 26 April, SPbGASU held a commemorative event dedicated to the 79th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. It was attended by veterans, students and university staff.
Irina Lugovskaia, Vice-Rector for Youth Policy, addressed those gathered on the balustrade of the main building. The Vice-Rector said that during the war, 950 people left our university for the front. Those who remained participated in defense and restoration work. Among the irretrievable military losses of the Soviet Union are 220 representatives of the Leningrad Civil Engineering Institute (now SPbGASU). Their names are immortalized on memorial plaques.
Oleg Konstantinovich Osminkin worked at our university for more than forty years. When the war began, he was still a child. Oleg Konstantinovich remembers how his family was evacuated. They sailed on boats on Lake Ladoga, and fountains of water rose up all around - it was the Nazis who were shooting the boats. Then they rode in a heated carriage to the city of Chkalov (Orenburg). During the evacuation, the family received a “funeral” message that the father, the commander of an anti-aircraft battery, had died. After such terrible news, Oleg Konstantinovich began to stutter. The doctors told the mother that it would pass. And this, indeed, passed over time.
When the family returned to their hometown, they discovered that their house was lucky - it did not get under fire. Oleg Konstantinovich graduated from technical school, then from the Baltic State Technical University "Voenmekh" named after D. F. Ustinov. At our university he taught the subject “Construction and road machinery” for more than forty years. He made inventions and, according to him, always achieved what he wanted.
Elena Pavlovna Girya was unable to come to the event. But university staff visited her, and she told her front-line story.
The war found Elena Pavlovna’s family at their dacha near Sestroretsk. While walking, a woman came across them and asked, “Where are you going?” Don't you know? It’s war!
Elena Pavlovna's father was a man of crystal honesty and decency. He died of starvation during the siege. Elena Pavlovna remembers how she carried him on a sled from the apartment to the institution for dystrophic people. One of her father’s orders was: do as you see fit. Elena Pavlovna rushed to the front to avenge her father and defend her Motherland.
Elena Pavlovna was taken to the front as a telephone operator. Everyone in the regiment was older, so they treated her like a child. The issued pistol seemed heavy to the girl from the besieged city. Someone treated her to an onion, and she dug into the raw onion as if there was nothing tastier.
Elena Pavlovna's task was to maintain contact with the batteries. If the connection stopped, it meant that the wire was broken, and you needed to crawl on your bellies to eliminate the break. One day, during the redeployment, shelling began, and Elena Pavlovna was wounded.
Her most terrible memory was how they carried the battery sergeant major, a tall, handsome guy, with his stomach torn apart. And he said he felt that he was going to die.
There were also joyful moments. The most striking thing was how fieryly fellow soldier Nastya Lisina danced. She was awarded the order.
Elena Pavlovna celebrated the victory in Riga.
“How did we manage to win? Due to a pure heart. There was no need to convince anyone that this was our homeland. We absorbed it with mother’s milk,” said Elena Pavlovna.
Participants in the solemn event honored the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War with a minute of silence and laid flowers at the memorial plaques on the balustrade of the main building of the university.
A festive concert was held in the assembly hall on that day. The creative teams of the “Kirpich” Student Creativity Club prepared a literary and musical composition dedicated to the feat of the Soviet people.
