Kresty Prison

Stand on the embankment for a moment and look across the water. The Neva moves wide and grey here. On the far bank, a long wall of dark red brick runs along the river. It is plain, heavy and unbroken. Behind it rise more brick buildings, and above them the small dome of a church. Gulls call overhead. Traffic hums along the riverside road. This is Kresty, one of the best-known prisons in Russia.

The name sounds gentle, but it is very literal. Kresty means crosses in Russian. The two main cell blocks were built in the shape of a cross. Each block has four long wings that meet at a central point. From above, the complex shows two great crosses of brick side by side. From the street you cannot see this layout. You have to imagine it, or find an aerial photograph later.

The prison stands on the Vyborg side of the city, on the right bank of the Neva. In the nineteenth century this district was full of factories, arsenals and workers' housing. It was not the elegant Saint Petersburg of palaces and canals. That city is just across the water. The contrast is still easy to see. One bank has grand facades. This bank has red brick, chimneys and long industrial walls.

The complex took its present form in the late nineteenth century. The design is usually credited to the architect Antony Tomishko. He specialised in prisons and other public buildings. The cross-shaped plan was popular in Europe at that time. A guard at the centre could watch several corridors at once. That was the idea: fewer guards, more control. Some accounts say that prisoners themselves helped to make the bricks and raise the walls. So the people inside may have built their own cells.

Here is a story you will hear from almost every local guide. Legend has it that the prison was designed with 999 cells. The thousandth cell, so the tale goes, was meant for the architect himself. Another version says he was buried inside the walls. There is no evidence for any of this. It is folklore, but it says something about how the city sees this building. People have long felt that Kresty keeps everyone it touches.

Look again at the church dome above the walls. Inside the complex there is a church dedicated to Saint Alexander Nevsky. He was a medieval prince and a patron saint of the city. Many nineteenth-century prisons had their own churches. Prayer and silence were thought to help a prisoner reform. During the Soviet period, the church was closed and used for other purposes. Later it was restored, and the dome was once again visible from the river.

Kresty held many political prisoners. In the early twentieth century, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky spent time here after the events of 1905. In the turbulent year of 1917, the prison was opened during the February Revolution, and inmates were released. Over the following decades, the doors closed again. In the 1930s, during the years of mass arrests under Stalin, thousands of people passed through these cells. Many never returned home.

Now turn around and look behind you, along the embankment. Here is the first real surprise. Some of the most important history of Kresty did not happen inside the walls. It happened out here, on this side of the river. During the Stalin years, relatives stood in long queues outside the prison. They waited for hours, sometimes for days, in rain and frost. They hoped to pass on a parcel or to hear a single word of news.

One of the people in those queues was the poet Anna Akhmatova. Her son, the historian Lev Gumilyov, was arrested and held in Kresty. Akhmatova waited outside with the other mothers and wives. From that experience came her long poem cycle called Requiem. It speaks for all the women who stood beside her. The poem was not published in the Soviet Union for decades. People learned it by heart and passed it on in secret.

Today a statue of Akhmatova stands on this embankment, facing the prison across the water. She looks toward the red walls, as she asked in her poem. Nearby are two bronze sphinxes by the artist Mihail Shemiakin. They are a memorial to the victims of political repression. Walk around them slowly. From the river side, each face looks like a young woman. From the other side, it is a bare skull. It is a quiet, unsettling detail that many visitors miss.

The walls also carried a different kind of conversation. For generations, prisoners tried to reach the people on the embankment. Locals say relatives used to wave, make signs with their hands, or shout across the road. Inside, prisoners sent messages along threads and tapped on pipes. The river and the road were always between them. Still, people found ways to say they were alive.

Here is a second surprise. Kresty is no longer a working prison in the old way. In 2017 the inmates were moved to a new, much larger facility outside the city centre, in the district of Kolpino. People often call it Kresty-2. The old brick complex was left behind. Since then, there has been much discussion about its future. Plans have included a hotel, offices or a cultural centre. The final shape of these plans is still open.

So what you see today is a building between two lives. The walls are the same. The brick is the same. But the sounds have changed. The shouts across the road are gone. The queues are gone. What remains is the river, the wind, and the long red line of the wall. It is a strange and serious place to stand.

Before you walk on, look across once more. Notice the colour of the brick in the light — darker in shadow, almost orange when the sun reaches it. Notice the small dome, and the narrow windows. Then look at Akhmatova beside you, still watching the far bank. As you leave the embankment, you may find yourself turning back for one last look. Many people do.