Tag: Ligovsky Prospect

Remembering Timur Kacharava Ten Years Later

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Timur Kacharava, 1985-2005

Remembering Timur Kacharava Ten Years Later
David Frenkel
Special to the Russian Reader
November 17, 2015

On the evening of November 13, 2015, more than fifty people gathered near the Bukvoyed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospect in the Vosstaniya Square area of downtown Petersburg to mourn anti-fascist and hardcore punk musician Timur Kacharava, who was murdered at the spot ten years earlier by Russian neo-Nazis.

Mourners gathered at the site of Kacharava's murder on Ligovsky Prospect
Mourners gathered at the site of Kacharava’s murder on Ligovsky Prospect

In 2005, Kacharava and a friend were attacked by a group of young men after participating in a Food Not Bombs action in another part of the downtown. Kacharava was stabbed in the neck five times and died at the scene.

Kacharava’s murder alarmed certain segments of Russian society. Over three thousand students at Saint Petersburg State University, where Kacharava had been majoring in philosophy at the time of his slaying, petitioned President Putin to find and punish the murderers.

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In December 2005, police arrested seven suspects who eventually confessed to the crime. In 2007, Alexander Shabalin was sentenced to twelve years in prison on charges of murder and incitement to ethnic or racial hatred. The other suspects were charged with inciting social hatred and sentenced to two or three years in prison. (Three of them were released on parole).

Since 2005, people have come to the crime scene every year on November 13 with flowers, candles, and pictures of Timur.

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This year, police did not interfere with the mourners, although they asked them to remove pictures from the parapet and not to shout out any slogans.

Photographs by and courtesy of David Frenkel

Who Are You? Passersby on Ligovsky Prospect

mariaThis is Maria. She writes existential novellas.

If you find yourself on Petrograd’s Ligovsky Prospect in the next week, go to the Open Workshops (Ligovsky Prospect 99; open noon–9 p.m., Monday–Saturday) and see the wonderful collective photographic project Who Are You? or Passersby on Ligovsky Project, which is mounted right on the street.

Here is what the project’s authors have to say about it:

During the week of January 24–30, 2015, the photography course led by Dmitry Pryakhin at the Open Workshops will invite passersby to have their photograph taken and ask them who they are and how things are going. The photographs and replies will be published daily on the project website: The end result will be a large number of photos of various passersby on Petersburg’s Ligovsky Prospect and their answers to our questions.

Project’s Instagram page: @ om_ktotitakoy
Project’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/kttproject

This was my favorite picture/story combination of the ones I saw and read at the street exhibition:

alexander and dan-vkAlexander and Deng

I went out at night for cigarettes, and Deng was in a sandbox howling at the moon. I invited him to come spend the night. In the morning it turned out his owners had died.

Deng is the father of China’s reforms.

Thanks to Comrade KB for the heads-up.