Panorama Museum of Stalingrad was completed in 1985 to celebrate 40th anniversary of victory in World War II. It was designed by chief architect Vadim Maslyaev and designer E.V. Temnikov. The first level consists of a museum dedicated to Battle of Stalingrad. The second level is taken by a huge round canvas depicting the military actions. One of the most distinct features of Panorama Museum is Gerharts's Mill. It is the only original part of ruined Volgograd that was preserved after the battle's end.
History of creation
The Battle of Stalingrad
Museum-Reserve traces its history back to the Tsaritsyn Defense
Museum named after Comrade Stalin, opened on January 3, 1937. In
January 1943, it was reorganized into the Museum of the Defense of
Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad named after Comrade Stalin, and in 1962, in
connection with the overcoming of the consequences of the Stalin
personality cult and the renaming of Stalingrad into Volgograd, into
the Volgograd State Defense Museum. On May 31, 1982, it was
transformed into the Volgograd State Panoramic Museum "Battle of
Stalingrad" and placed in a new building designed by the
"Volgogradgrazhdanproekt" Institute. The author of the project was
Vadim Maslyaev, the chief architect of Volgograd.
The
memorial and architectural complex of the Battle of Stalingrad
panorama museum consists of two levels: the first level contains the
Battle of Stalingrad museum, the storage room, the administrative
part of the museum-reserve, the second level is completely occupied
by the circular panorama “The defeat of the Nazi troops at
Stalingrad”. Nearby are the ruins of the mill. K. Grudinin, left as
a memory of the brutality of the battles. In the open air there is a
permanent exhibition of samples of military equipment, a monument to
the sailors of the Volga military flotilla, on the territory of the
complex there is a monument to the peaceful inhabitants of
Stalingrad and a monument to the commander G.K. Zhukov.
The
panorama was opened on July 8, 1982, the Battle of Stalingrad Museum
was opened three years later, on May 6, 1985, on the eve of the 40th
anniversary of the Victory.
Decree of the Administration of
the city of Volgograd No. 199-5 of July 1, 1993 "On the opening of
the Volgograd Memorial and Historical Museum" in the old museum
building on the street. Gogol, an exposition dedicated to the events
of the Civil War in the Tsaritsyn area was opened.
By the
decree of the Head of the Volgograd Region Administration dated
November 19, 2001, the "Historical and Memorial Complex" To the
Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad "on the Mamayev Kurgan" received
a new status, becoming a state cultural institution.
In
August 2007, by combining the panorama museum "Battle of Stalingrad"
and the historical and memorial complex "To the Heroes of the Battle
of Stalingrad" on the Mamayev Kurgan, the State Historical and
Memorial Museum-Reserve "The Battle of Stalingrad" was formed.
In January 2008, by order of the Government of the Russian
Federation, the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve was included in
the list of federal cultural institutions and assigned to
Roskultura. In December 2011, by the decree of the President of the
Russian Federation, the museum was classified as a particularly
valuable cultural heritage site of the peoples of the Russian
Federation.
On June 30, 2011, a press conference was held at
the Pobeda press center on the topic “Museumification of the
historical zone of the central department store”. In December 2010,
the territorial administration of the Federal Property Management
Agency for the Volgograd Region asked the management of the Battle
of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve to consider the possibility of
transferring the basement of the Central Department Store with a
total area of 1198 m². for its subsequent museification. The
management of the museum-reserve, having received the principal
consent of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation to
secure the indicated areas on the basis of the operational
management of the museum, gave a positive response to the request of
the Federal Property Management Agency. The process of transferring
these areas to the museum-reserve was complicated by the
unwillingness of the entrepreneurs occupying them to comply with the
court decisions taken in relation to them. In May 2012, the Memory
Museum was included in the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve.
Structure
Today the Federal State Budgetary Institution of
Culture "State Historical and Memorial Museum-Reserve" Battle of
Stalingrad "" (as a legal entity) includes a number of objects:
Museum-panorama "Battle of Stalingrad"
Memorial complex "Heroes
of the Battle of Stalingrad" on the Mamayev Kurgan
Memorial
Historical Museum (Museum of Tsaritsyn Defense)
Monument to
V.I.Lenin at the entrance to the Volga-Don shipping channel
Museum "Memory" in the basement of the Central Department Store
Exposition
Museum-panorama "Battle of Stalingrad" - the main
object of the reserve, includes 8 thematic exhibition halls,
triumphal and panoramic halls. Among the most famous exhibits
presented in the main exhibition are the Sword of Stalingrad, the
sniper rifle of Vasily Zaitsev, four thematic dioramas dedicated to
the events of the Battle of Stalingrad and the panorama "The Defeat
of Nazi Troops at Stalingrad".
On the territory of the panoramic museum there is
an exposition of Soviet military equipment of the Second World War
period, including tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts: IS-2,
IS-3, ISU-152, T-60 (on the move), a destroyed tank-monument T-
34-76. A participant in local conflicts, a T-72 tank, with traces of
being hit from a grenade launcher is installed nearby. On the
northern side of the complex there is a memorial to military railway
workers "Military Echelon". East of the intersection of the streets.
Marshal Chuikov and 13th Guards installed a model of the Su-2. To
the southeast of the complex, on the banks of the Volga, there is
another museum object - the BK-13 armored boat. At the end of
December 2012, the exposition of post-war equipment of the USSR was
moved to the territory of Mamayev Kurgan, as well as two working T
34-85 tanks, which are participating in parades and
military-historical reconstructions.
Museum "Memory" is
located in the basement of the central department store, the museum
exposition reveals the events of January 1943. In April 2018, at the
expense of the Presidential Grants Fund, a multimedia project
"Victory Password - Stalingrad" was implemented in the museum,
involving a thematic video installation in one of the exhibition
halls.
The exposition of the Memorial-Historical Museum
reveals the events of the Civil War in the South of Russia in
1917-1920.
The ruins of the mill. Grudinin
The Grudinin
(Gergardt) Mill is a typical pre-revolutionary five-story mill
building, which has become a symbol of the brutality of street
fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad. The roof of the building was
destroyed by a direct hit from aerial bombs; traces of numerous
frontal hits of artillery shells are visible. Literally every square
meter of the outer walls of the building is cut by bullets and
shrapnel. The nearby pipe is also badly damaged.
Built in
1900 and rebuilt after a fire in 1908, this building was one of the
most modern of its time. When restoring the mill, a new building
material, reinforced concrete, was used. On the territory of the
flour-grinding complex there were a flour-grinding, a fish-smoking,
an oil mill, a bakery shop, and its own electric generator. The
company employed about 200 employees. The mill complex belonged to
the A. D. Gergardt and nephews ”. The names of the owners were laid
out of bricks on the gables and the eastern façade of the building,
and the dates “1900” were also laid out on the gables above the
Gergardt name.
In the pre-war Soviet era, production was
nationalized and became known as Gosmelnitsa No. 4. In 1929, it was
named after Konstantin Grudinin, a Bolshevik who worked as a mill
turner: he headed a party cell that fought the enemies of Soviet
power; On May 26, 1922, Grudinin was shot dead.
The mill
worked until September 14, 1942, when the building was hit by
high-explosive bombs, which caused a fire and a halt in
flour-grinding work. During the battles in the city during the
Battle of Stalingrad, the building became a fortified point of
defense of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment under the command of the
Guards Colonel Yelin, who was part of the 13th Guards Rifle Division
of Major General Alexander Rodimtsev.
activity
On March
25, 2010, a meeting of the Victory organizing committee was held in
the hall of the panorama museum, in which the President of the
Russian Federation Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev took part.
On
June 22, 2012, Volgograd was presented at the panorama museum as a
candidate for the World Cup.
Church construction
In October 2010 it became known that the Volgograd diocese plans to build a temple next to the panoramic museum. The Culture Committee of the Volgograd Administration informs that on the site of the former flower bed, at the entrance to the alley, which is located next to the panoramic museum "Battle of Stalingrad", a memorial cross was erected, containing the inscription: "In the summer of 2010 October 14 from the birth of Christ, this cross was installed in commemoration of the construction of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos with the blessing of the Metropolitan of Volgograd and Kamyshin Herman. The head of Volgograd, Roman Grebennikov, supported the project: “The future temple and the panoramic museum are perfectly combined. A temple is a place of prayer, a museum is a memory, and there are no contradictions between these concepts. " But, despite this, the initiative to build the temple caused indignation among local residents, since the construction of the temple in the immediate vicinity of their homes, among other things, involved cutting down 700 m² of green space. Discontent was also connected with the fact that the construction of the temple was supposed to be in the immediate vicinity of the museum, which would violate the architectural intention of the creators of the panorama museum. The initiative group of townspeople sent written appeals to various authorities, and also appealed directly to the President of Russia with a request to understand the situation. As a result of the proceedings, the decision to reserve a site for the construction of the temple was canceled by the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture of Volgograd. A playground has been installed at the site of the proposed construction.