Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –
Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –
The Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of St. Petersburg included the complex of buildings of the Polytechnic University Student Campus in the unified state register of cultural heritage sites of regional significance. Four residential complexes built in 1929–1930, located on Lesnoy Prospekt, Pargolovskaya and Kharchenko Streets, a club, a factory kitchen and a mechanical workshop on Kapitana Voronina Street have been recognized as monuments.
In the 1920s and 1930s, special attention was paid to the training of engineering personnel in the USSR, and workers’ faculties were organized in universities. The number of students at the Polytechnic University then reached six thousand people, and the dormitories that had existed since pre-revolutionary times were no longer sufficient. A site on Lesnoy Prospekt was chosen for the construction of new ones. The project for the complex was approved in February 1930. Its authors were architects S. E. Brovtsev, M. D. Felger, A. V. Petrov and engineer K. V. Sakhnovsky.
“Probably the most interesting building in the town is the factory kitchen,” says Valery Klimov, director of the SPbPU History Museum. “Its main purpose was to free women from housework. Not only was food prepared for the student canteen here, but semi-finished products were also made to make cooking at home easier. This was an innovative invention of the 1930s.”
In Leningrad, four factory kitchens opened in 1930 alone. They were all standard: three or four floors, a basement and a semi-basement. The first floor was allocated for production facilities and a cloakroom for visitors, a convenience store, and a snack bar. The second floor was for simple dining rooms, the third for banquets.
In total, eight factory kitchens were built in Leningrad — the most in the USSR. Four of them are recognized as architectural monuments. These are the Vyborg (Stalin) factory kitchen on Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Prospect 45/2, the Vasileostrovskaya factory kitchen on Bolshoy Prospect of Vasilievsky Island, 68, the Moscow factory kitchen (Leningrad Food Plant) on Moskovsky Prospect, 114, and the factory kitchen of the Polytechnic Institute dormitories on Kapitana Voronina Street, 13a, b, v.
In 1932, a mechanical laundry building appeared on the territory, which also housed showers and a sanitary checkpoint.
When the Great Patriotic War began, the student town became the place where the people’s militia was formed. On June 22, 1941, after Vyacheslav Molotov’s speech on the radio, students from all the surrounding dormitories gathered on the third floor of the factory kitchen and began to compile lists of volunteers. Here is how a participant in the storming of Berlin, later associate professor of the hydraulic machinery department, Ivan Nikolaevich Filatov, recalled it: “On June 22, Sunday, we were working in our room, and at 12:00 we were supposed to listen to the scheduled broadcast of Leningrad radio “Let’s not!..” – a satirical music program based on local material, and at the same time relax. But instead, the head of the Soviet government, V. M. Molotov, spoke, reporting on the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany and the beginning of military operations from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea. He ended his speech with a phrase that later became a catchphrase: “Our cause is just, the enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours!” Despite such an ending, everyone in the room was speechless – everything was unexpected. Then came the time of the highest excitement: I threw my notebooks in the corner, everyone quickly began to run out into the street. And there, near our factory-kitchen, students from all the buildings of our town gathered, a spontaneous rally began: everyone wanted to say their main word, to do something useful for the homeland, to stand up for its defense.”
Here, in the dormitories of the student campus, in 1941 the 3rd rifle regiment of the Frunze division of the people’s militia and the 5th division of the people’s militia of the Vyborg district were formed.
Nowadays, the People’s University Theatre “Glagol” is located on the fourth floor of the former factory kitchen.
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