Citizens! During shelling this side of the street is the most dangerous

Leningrad, 1944. Citizens celebrate the end of the siege with the removal of the warning

Citizens! During shelling this side of the street is the most dangerous (Russian: Граждане! При артобстреле эта сторона улицы наиболее опасна, romanized: Grazhdane! Pri artobstrele eta storona ulitsy naiboleye opasna) was a public warning message that appeared on the streets of Leningrad during the siege of the city in the Second World War.

The warnings were stencilled on the sides of streets where passers-by were most vulnerable from artillery shells fired from German positions to the south of the city. The Germans fired tens of thousands of shells into the city during the course of the siege, killing and wounding many of its inhabitants. With the final lifting of the siege in 1944 and the retreat of the Germans, the danger from artillery bombardment passed and the warning signs were removed from the walls. They had however become a powerful memory and a symbol of the dangers that the city's inhabitants had faced during the war. Poet Mikhail Dudin made reference to them in his poems, and spearheaded an initiative to have the sign recreated on a building on Nevsky Prospect. It was accompanied with a memorial plaque paying tribute to the bravery of the city's inhabitants during the siege. Over the next decade the inscription was recreated several times, with accompanying plaques, which have become de facto war memorials, described at times as the "most famous monuments from the time of the blockade". Despite this they have been occasionally vandalised or stolen. The wording has also been altered for use as a political statement.


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