On May 8, Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg JSC (SP SPb) participated in celebrations on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
On the eve of May 9, SP SPb annually holds large-scale ceremonial events. Veterans, employees, representatives of trade unions, students and local residents gather in the park at the port’s main gate to lay the flowers at the war memorials and to participate in the Memorial March. Members of the veterans’ organization are offered tours around the company premises, water trips along the city rivers, holiday concerts and amicable meetings with young port workers.
The festive programme has been reduced this year due restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, SP SPb employees paid tribute to the veterans and congratulated them. 25 of Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg veterans are participants of the Great Patriotic War, prisoners of concentration camps and home front workers. Financial assistance has been provided to them by the company on the occasion of the anniversary.
SP SPb also paid the tribute to the memory of those fallen in the war: several representatives of the company laid floral wreathes at the Monument to Heroic Seafarers of the Baltic Shipping Company and the Leningrad Port on the Mezhevoi Canal, at the Monument to Port Workers an Seafarers in the territory of the port and at the Monument to Fallen Workers of Kanonersky Shipyard on the Kanonersky Island.
The Memorial March was held online with portraits of port workers perished on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and included into the company’s Memorial Book published on the corporative portal. From April, SP SPb personnel could leaf through the virtual pages of the archive and commemorate those who laid down their lives for the sake of the Motherland and the peaceful skies; among them are pilots and stevedores, mechanics and loaders, crane operators and carpenters, workers and managers of Leningrad Commercial Seaport, as well as many other specialists.
Andrey Zubarev, Managing Director of Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg JSC:
– Victory Day is a date linking different generations of port workers through a common history, common memory and understanding of core values of life: peace, creative labour, safety of our nearest and dearest. Our port, the then port of Leningrad, was the main line of the besieged city defense, the strategic target of the enemy aviation and artillery. Under the enemy bombing, port workers were adjusting the fire of our warships; in the siege conditions they were working hard to handle military cargo. Hundreds of people joined the Red Army and the militia troops, participated in construction of the Road of Life, were sent to other ports of the country to support their operation.
We bow our heads before those who demonstrated courage and valor every day throughout severe years of war, who went into combat and repelled the fascist aggressors. The example of combat veterans, homefront workers and siege survivors can hardly be overestimated. It teaches us to face the future with confidence, trust ourselves, love and respect our country, our city and the elderly people.
Today, we express our gratitude to all the veterans for what we have, for the opportunity to live and work under peaceful skies.
