In the XX-th century

The status of the town was given to Sestroretsk on 16th June, 1925.

Biographies of many famous people are linked with our city. Sestroretsk is known as a native town of the outgoing Russian scientist Sergey Vernov, who was born in our town in 1910. S. Vernov was the Russian and Soviet physician, the academician of Academy of Science of the USSR, specialist in the field of space rays physics. In 2009 The Russian Academy of Science put forward the idea to give the name of S. Vernov to one of new streets in Sestroretsk. Municipal Council of the town supported this initiation and Academic Vernov’s street appeared on the map of our town. In summer, 2010 the memorable obelisk was erected to commemorate the 100th anniversary of S. N. Vernov.

From the beginning of 1930s up to 1958 Sestroretsk gave the shelter to one of the most significant writer of the Russian literature – Mikhail Zoschenko. He lived on Polevaya Street and after his death was buried at Sestroretsk cemetery. Later the Central Library of the town was named after M. Zoschenko. In 2003 the fascinating monument was put up in the square of the Central Library to commemorate this wonderful writer. Annually “Zoschenko’s readings” are taken place in the library and many famous artists and musicians such as Alexander Filippenko, Semen Altov, Gennady Vetrov and many others attend it.

A special chapter in the history of the town had began during the Great Patriotic War. Sestroretsk met the enemy on the 1st of September, 1941. That time the soldiers of the 120th Fighter Battalion, consisting of workers of “Sestroretsk’s Instrumental Plant”, employees of all town organizations and recent school-leavers, as well as border guards and marines of the Baltic Fleet from Kronstadt took the blow of the advanced parts of the Finnish army and stopped the Nazis on the northern boundary of Leningrad. It was under the siege for long three years. Two and a half thousand citizens of Sestroretsk did not return from the battlefields, more than four thousand died of cold and hunger during the siege. In the postwar period Sestroretsk was developing as a resort town which it is to the present.

In unique shape of modern Sestroretsk cross and interlace riches of rich culture and history with the present, invaluable experience of veterans course of life with the energy and beauty of the youth directed into the future.