Podborovye brings together the memory of the Road of Life and a church built at a later date. At the “Avtomashina ZIS-5” monument, a truck on a concrete plinth and a schematic drawing of a section of road take centre stage. The wooden, two-storey Church of St. John of Kronstadt offers a contrasting architectural feature. Together, these sites provide a tangible introduction to local history and its different time periods.
The monument to the Road of Life
The “Avtomashina ZIS-5” monument is part of the “Zelenyy poyas Slavy Leningrada” ensemble and stands on the Road of Life, which ran through this area in 1941–1942. Its design features a truck on a concrete plinth, with a schematic drawing of a section of the road in front of it. An inscription reads, in English translation: “Here the Road of Life began. November–December 1941.” The months mentioned are part of the inscription’s wording.
The start of construction of Highway 102 is also important for understanding the history: work began in Podborovye in 1941. The highway was a section of the Road of Life. A monument in Podborovye also commemorates the defence of Leningrad and is part of the “Green Belt of Glory of Leningrad.” Local history thus brings together specific information about the route and construction of the road with a remembrance of the city’s defence.
A later architectural feature
The Church of St. John of Kronstadt was built between 1995 and 1997. It is made of wood and has two storeys. Its construction therefore differs clearly from that of the truck monument on its concrete plinth. The two also belong to different periods: the monument refers to 1941–1942, while the church was built in the 1990s. Visiting Podborovye thus means moving between the memory of wartime and a much later church building.
More to explore in Boksitogorskiy rayon
Beyond Podborovye, Boksitogorskiy rayon offers its own regional perspective. The “Astracha, 1941” museum tells the story of events near Tikhvin in November and December 1941, focusing on the real-life stories of a Russian boy and a German boy. Its interactive exhibition continuously presents a chronicle of the wartime years on four screens; visitors can interact with authentic wartime objects. These museum themes complement the remembrance of the Road of Life with another perspective on the region’s history.
The landscape and traditions are also part of the region’s story. Some of the worked-out quarries there are flooded and form artificial lakes. Fish species found in the quarries include trout, muksun, perch, roach, bream and catfish. Somino Peter’s Fair is a revived tradition in the urban-type settlement of Efimovskoye, once a well-known merchant village. These examples represent different points of interest from the monuments and church architecture in Podborovye.
Discover more destinations: Volochayevskoye, Vyritsa, Vsevolozhsk, Staraya Sloboda, Lyugovichi, Zaborye, Svobodnoye, Rozhdestveno.
For the broader travel overview: Leningrad Oblast.
