The march of the Red Army in Petrograd

This picture has been in our family album for ages. My father, Yakov Plotkin, told me that it was the march of the Red Army  in Petrograd. Now a lot has changed in the city, and I cannot name the place where the picture was taken. A temple can be seen in the background, but it probably does not exist now, as in the 1930s many churches and temples were blown up.

I don't know how and when my parents met. I only know that their marriage wasn't registered. They rented a room for some time not far from grandparents' place, but by the time I was born they returned to my grandparents'. They only registered their marriage in the 1950s.

My father was born in 1899 in the small town of Rogachev, Belarus. He graduated from the Chemical Pharmaceutical Institute and served in the Red Army as of 1918.

When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, he signed up for the People's Volunteer Corps, but he was brought back to the plant, because he had been wounded on his ear during the Civil War. He had an operation and his hearing became bad afterwards.

My father died in Leningrad in 1962.