Alexey Sergeev attends unveiling ceremony at the monument to Peter the Great

Townsfolk started crowding at the site hours before noon, veterans of the frontline and survivors of the Blockade, coming individually and by the whole families. Following the official ceremony, came democratic festivities with music and dances. Speaking at the official ceremony, the Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council Cecretariat Alexey Segeev said that the crowning achievement of Peter’s life was a new country and a brand-new city of St Petersburg. Translated into modern parlance, Peter was an architect of pan-european integration which invested the nation and her neighbors with a new dynamism. Economic, commercial, cultural, intellectual fabric that binds the CIS today has been woven back then, during the Peter’s reign. These bonds withstood the test of centuries.