THE RUSSIAN CEMETERY

The main shaft of the arrow shaped Russian Cemetery just off Zwirki i Wigury is a wonder of 'framed space'. Looking east here, there are two files of cedar trees and two sets of Socrealist monuments to the fallen which, their own greatness notwithstanding, imbue the walker with a corresponding splendour of space. Behind the phalanxes of cedars there are the graves of the known dead. Though there are perhaps only a few hundred of these, there are nonethless 15000 soldiers buried here. Coalescing with the cemetery are the pine groves and allotments which surround the graveyard. The whole complex, with its trees, red squirrels and birds (a great corvid community, especially from November to March when hundreds of Siberian rooks nest here), and its surprising quietness all year round remains as one of Warsaw's great meditative spaces. Long may the cracked paving stones live!