On April 28, one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five, the thirteenth and fourteenth sphinxes of St. Petersburg appeared on the Maximilian Robespierre Embankment.

Two bronze creatures on red granite pedestals are separated by a stone structure resembling a narrow window in a prison block, with the inscription “Victims of Political Repression”. The faces of the sphinxes are dual - on the one hand, a feminine beautiful face, on the other - a decaying skull. With their dead side, the faces of the sphinxes face another sight of St. Petersburg - the Kresty prison.

On the granite pedestals of these mythological monsters are attached copper plates with texts of writers, poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, who have gone through each circle of hell called political terror.

And here's the strange thing: the first pair of sphinxes that appeared in St. Petersburg two centuries ago was bought by a Russian envoy from the French, who had no time for Egyptian antiquities when on the streets of Paris began its bloody dance revolution, taking the very Robespierre out of oblivion at its last turn to the inglorious death.

And the two youngest sphinxes arrived in Northern Thebes from France as a gift from the prodigal son of Russia - sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin as a symbol of the end of the revolutionary era in Russia and a tribute to the memory of her victims.

The Gospel of John says, “God is Love.” But where there is a division of the world in half, there is no place for Love. And where there is Love, all opposites become one. Perhaps this is the truth that young sphinxes carry with their disfigured faces.