On June 20, 2010, within the framework of city-wide program "Tolerance" and the Agreement on Cooperation between St.Petersburg Government and the Senate of Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Committee for External Relations of St.Petersburg ran an international peacekeeping action "The Candle of Memory", in cooperation with the Department for Relations with Religious Associations of St.Petersburg and with organizational involvement of German Evangelical-Lutheran community in St.Petersburg, Russian Orthodox Church, and Consulate General of Germany in St.Petersburg.
On June 20, 2010, within the framework of city-wide program "Tolerance" and the Agreement on Cooperation between St.Petersburg Government and the Senate of Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Committee for External Relations of St.Petersburg ran an international peacekeeping action "The Candle of Memory", in cooperation with the Department for Relations with Religious Associations of St.Petersburg and with organizational involvement of German Evangelical-Lutheran community in St.Petersburg, Russian Orthodox Church, and Consulate General of Germany in St.Petersburg.
The action "The Candle of Memory" is a peace-keeping and educational one: it aims to draw public attention to the lessons of history, to remind about the inadmissibility of wars, to introduce the motorbikers from Germany with the traditions and life of the Russian Orthodox Church, and to establish cooperation between German and Russian motorcycle clubs. In addition, the campaign provides an opportunity to acquaint the Russian public with the activities of motorclubs of Russia and Germany, and it is going to change for the better the possible negative stereotypes of the society attitudes towards the subculture of motorbikers.
The main event was the rally motor race arranged on the eve of the anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, which was attended by about 300 motorbikers from Russia and Germany, who visited the places of fighting related to the defense of Leningrad in 1941-1944, as well as military burial places to join the church commemoration services for the fallen.
A column of motorbikers started from Isaakievskaya Square and proceeded to Town Kirovsk of Leningrad Region, where a meeting was held at the Nevskiy Bridgehead, the Requiem for the fallen soldiers was serviced by the clergy of Russian Orthodox Church, and the flowers and wreaths were laid at the military graves. Then the column of motorbikers parted for Village Lezye-Sologubovka. On grounds of Russia's first Park of Peace, located in vicinity of Orthodox Church of the Assumption, there is the German military cemetery, the largest in Europe. After a brief meeting, the clergy of Evangelical Lutheran Church also serviced the Requiem for the fallen soldiers and all war victims.
News source: Committee for External Relations of St.Petersburg