The Federal Property Management Agency has decided the fate of Russia’s oldest prison – the complex of the former Kresty Remand Center on Arsenalnaya Embankment in St. Petersburg. The new owner of a 4.5 hectare plot on the Vyborg side with all buildings was the joint-stock company “DOM.RF”. This was reported by the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
JSC “DOM.RF” received 24 real estate, including the prison building itself, built with beams forming a cross in plan, as well as a hospital, an infectious disease barracks, a morgue, an ice cream parlour, a forge and other premises.
The decision was taken within the framework of the housing construction development program and the assessment of the efficiency of the use of land owned by the federal government.
According to TASS, JSC DOM.RF plans to use the space of Krestov as efficiently as possible in order to give the territory new functions and return it to the urban environment, while maintaining the tourist attractiveness of this place.
Recall that the Krestov building has been empty since December 2017, when the transfer of all prisoners to a new remand center in Kolpino near St. Petersburg was completed. “Cross” is a landmark for many Petersburgers and Russians; victims of Stalinist repressions were held in this prison, including the poet Nikolai Gumilyov and Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. The memorial on the opposite bank of the Neva “To the Victims of Political Repressions” with a monument to Anna Akhmatova, who described the “Crosses” in her “Requiem”, reminds us of a terrible page in Russian history.
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