Day 13: Museum of the Great Patriotic War

This museum, located in Park Povedy, is hands down the best war museum in Russia and I highly recommend it for anyone visiting Moscow.  Besides the large collection of artifacts and displays from throughout the war, they also have a lot of English language signs as opposed to the others I’ve seen.  It’s worth the trip.  Also, if you want to take photos inside, pay the extra rubles for the photo permit (in a fair number of Russian museums you have to pay extra if you want to take photos or video inside).  It’s generally a smart idea to do that anyways, but this is the one museum where they stopped me several times to verify that I had it.

You start off on the lower floor of the museum near the “Hall of Memory and Sorrow.”  This hall is dedicated to the 26 million casualties the Soviets sustained during the course of the war, with roughly two million chains hanging from the ceiling with small crystals at the bottom to symbolize the tears shed.  The hall is lined with about twenty books containing the casualty list of servicemen and women, with an open room at the end shown below.

The sculpture at the end of the Hall of Memory and Sorrow.

There are also five excellent dioramas featuring key events throughout the war, complete with an English translation describing the scene and the background.  There is “The Counteroffensive of Soviet Troops Under Moscow” (Dec 1941) depicting the first major defeat of the Wehrmacht in World War II as they are pushed back from the suburbs of Moscow.  “Siege of Leningrad” (1941-43) shows a scene from the worst part of the 3-year siege in winter 1941 where rations for adults fell as low as 600 calories per day (125 grams of bread a day for non-workers) leading to widespread starvation.  Supply over Lake Lagoda improved in 1942 taking the city back from the brink and the blockade was finally breached in 1943.

Diorama on the “Siege of Leningrad” painted by Eugeny Alekseevich Korneev shows the city at the lowest point of the 900-day siege in November 1941.

There’s “Stalingrad Battle: The Meeting of Fronts” showing not the bloody city fighting that the Germans ground through August-November 1942, but the Soviet counteroffensive that encircled over 260,000 German, Romanian, and Hungarian soldiers in the city, almost all of whom died or surrendered over the following months.  Despite the German setback around Moscow in 1941, the German defeat at Stalingrad decisively ended German hopes for victory on the Eastern Front.  Another diorama, “Battle of Kursk” shows the chaos of the largest tank battle in history which the Russians used to bleed the Germans dry before opening their own counteroffensive that would liberate the eastern half of the Ukraine.

Diorama “Forcing the Dniepr” showing the river crossing of the greatest river in the Ukraine, and Germany’s “Eastern Rampart” painted by Victor Konstantinovich Dmitrievsky.

Speaking of the Ukraine, the next diorama (shown above) is the Soviets forcing the Dniepr in the autumn of 1943.  The Dniepr is the major river running through the Ukraine and is a formidable water obstacle to any army, especially one going west (the west bank is significantly higher than the east bank).  However, Hitler’s hopes of turning it into an eastern defensive line came to naught due to the aggressive river crossing efforts of the Soviet troops.  Kiev fell before the end of 1943 and by the summer of 1944 the Soviets liberated virtually the whole Ukraine.  The final diorama is “Assault on Berlin” showing the closing act of the war as Soviet troops storm the Reichstag.

Diorama “Assault on Berlin” by Veniamin Mikhailovich Sibirsky shows Soviet troops storming the Reichstag which Soviet propagandists called the “lair of the fascist beast” even though in reality the building had been largely during the Nazi regime.

As a reminder of the sheer size of the Red Army during the war, there are several walls just listing the names of the divisions that fought in the war.  The Soviets had over 400 divisions in their Army, putting nearly 33 million men under arms throughout the war (of which 11 million were killed or captured).  The US Army in World War II, in contrast, fielded only 100 divisions with a total end strength of 8.3 million.

Bust of Soviet Marshal Ivanovich Stepanovich Konev, who is ranked second only to Zhukov for his achievements in the war.	The wall of divisions that served in the Red Army during World War II.

There is also a large central room listing the names of every “Hero of the Soviet Union” awarded during the course of the war with a victorious Soviet soldier in the center holding a helmet and a laurel wreath. 

The “Hall of Glory” and names of the Heroes of the Soviet Union recipients during the Second World War, in total roughly 11,800 people.

Finally, the upper floor (around the Hall of Glory) contains the historical exhibits on the war from start to finish.  As I noted last year, the lighting gets progressively darker as you progress through the early years of the war and the Soviet defeats, with it being darkest in the section showing the German atrocities in occupied Russia and the struggle of the partisans against the German forces.  After the tide shifts and the war nears its conclusion, you start to return to the main hall with its ample, white lighting.  One interesting note is the exhibit on the Soviet involvement in the War in the Pacific (the Soviets invaded Manchuria, at the request of the Allies, two days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima): the exhibit mentions how the Soviets inflicted the greatest defeat on the Japanese in their entire history in a few short weeks (killing over 80,000 and capturing some 640,000) with the Japanese surrendering soon afterwards.  Of course, no mention is made of the previous four years of struggle across the Pacific, the carpet bombing of Japan, the atomic bombs, or the defeat of the Japanese Navy.  Oh no – the Russians invaded and the Japanese surrendered.  Apparently, the Russians think that was all really inconsequential to the outcome of the war… though perhaps that’s how a lot of Americans see the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Germany. 

Mock-up of the table where Stalin and his commanders planned their moves and countermoves in the war.	The exhibit on the German occupation regime located on the back side of the Hall of Glory.

To sum it up, I highly recommend this museum for the quality of its displays, its bilingual signs, and its detail.  To top it off, the gift shop is top-notch ranging from a good collection of documentary DVDs (like the “Russian Armor” ten-part documentary series I picked up last year), books, even games (if, say, I wanted to get a Russian version of the computer game “World in Conflict: Soviet Assault” – which I didn’t). 

Nazi standards and awards, captured during the course of the war.  In the Soviet victory parade after the war, the Nazi standards were thrown down at the foot of Lenin’s Tomb and were followed by an epic military parade (even by Soviet standards).