MOSCOW, November 21, Anastasia Silkina.Historians, public organizations and volunteers are actively working to preserve the memory of the events of the special military operation in Ukraine. Already now at exhibitions you can see unique artifacts from the liberated territories. What the exhibits tell us about and how they end up in museums is in the material .
Traces lead to the West: what is shown in the Victory Museum
Some of the first projects dedicated to the situation in Donbass are “Ordinary Nazism” and “Ordinary NATOcism” – at the Victory Museum in Moscow. This exhibition is about the history of nationalism in Ukraine and its support by the North Atlantic Alliance, explains the museum’s deputy director for exhibition work, Yulia Moskvicheva.
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“We are talking about how Nazism originated in Ukraine, how it was fueled, how supporters of nationalist movements behaved during the Great Patriotic War and where they later emigrated. After the collapse of the USSR, they returned to their homeland, the nationalist movement resumed,” she says.
The exhibition includes materials from the collections of the Victory Museum, the Donetsk Republican Museum of Local Lore, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, as well as the special project “Donbass. Genocide 2014-2022”. Among the more than 200 artifacts are objects brought from the territory of Donbass, documentary evidence of the crimes of the Ukrainian Nazis, their diaries and personal belongings.
The museum calls “creativity of the mentally ill” samples from an exhibition in Lisichansk, dedicated to the advantages of joining NATO: a painted grenade launcher and embroidered grenades.
There is evidence of shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine of residential areas of Rubezhnoye, Mariupol, Popasnaya and Severodonetsk, fragments of NATO weapons provided by the French journalist Adrian Boke. He came to cover the conflict in Donbass and stayed to tell the world the truth about Western-backed war crimes. The control system unit of the American HIMARS and the fragments that claimed many civilian lives in Donetsk were handed over to the museum workers by the adviser to the head of the DPR, Ian Gagin.
Scientific Secretary of the Victory Museum Viktor Senichkin considers the Victory Banner from Lisichansk to be one of the most interesting exhibits.
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“It was erected above the Lisichansk city hall in July 2022, when the city was liberated. It was signed by those who installed it and two journalists, including military correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev,” the expert explains. “This is the first autograph of a military commander from the Northern Military District zone that ended up in the museum.”
Rostislav Zhuravlev died at the end of July while preparing a report in the Zaporozhye region, coming under Ukrainian artillery fire.
At the center of the exhibition is an installation dedicated to the children of Donbass. There is a burnt bicycle from the scene of the death of a five-year-old boy. According to Senichkin, horrifying artifacts will soon be brought to the museum – samples of toys mined by the Ukrainian military.
The project “Testaments of Faith” tells about the exploits of soldiers and doctors in the Northern Military District and during the Great Patriotic War.
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Help volunteers: personal belongings of heroes of Donbass
In the regions, museum collections dedicated to special operations are mainly replenished by volunteers and public organizations.
In the Museum of the History of Troops of the House of Officers in St. Petersburg, on the anniversary of the reunification of the LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions with Russia, an exhibition ” Unconquered Donbass”. It was organized by the Leningrad Volunteer center, which since 2015 has been demonstrating its collection of artifacts on the topic of the conflict in Donbass, and also conducts patriotic education lessons for young people.
To save memory about these difficult days, about the heroes who stood up to defend the Russian world, activists collected documents, personal belongings of the militia, evidence of the atrocities of Ukrainian nationalism.
The exhibition includes a prayer book and a hat of Alexei Mozgovoy, commander of the Prizrak brigade. A native of Luhansk region resisted the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation in Lisichansk and Debaltseve. He died in May 2015 near Alchevsk: his convoy was ambushed.
Visitors can see Evgeniy Ponomarev's uniform, given by his mother. Hereditary Cossack, commander of the “Wolf Hundred” with the call sign Dingo, took part in the events in Crimea, then in Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, smashed the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and freed civilians. He died under mortar fire in August 2014 near Krasnodon.
The interregional public organization for promoting the preservation of domestic traditions and cultural heritage “Veche” helped open the exhibition at the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg.
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The exhibition includes personal belongings of the liberators of Donbass. For example, the sniper of the People's Militia of the DPR Andrei Kutsky (call sign Skripach) who died in the battles near Kominternovo and the Serbian volunteer sniper Dejan Berich. There is also the first flag of the DPR – one of the hundred that belonged to the first parliament of the republic. The flag differs from the current one in the inscription under the shield “Donetsk Rus'”, note in the museum.
Sketches on cardboard and the ban on names: works of a front-line artist
Also at the Museum of Artillery until the end of November, the exhibition “Front-line Sketches” by the artist Yuri Sivachev, who paints directly in the North Military District zone, is open. The junior sergeant was awarded the medal “For Military Valor” II degree for courage and bravery.
Sivachev was mobilized a year ago and included in the first front-line creative brigade of the Western Military District. These are served by professional vocalists, musicians, artists and actors – a continuation of the tradition of the Great Patriotic War. Now Yuri performs in the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Western Military District.
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“I decided to write heroes of our time,” explains Sivachev. “You don’t have to go far to find the images – they are all there: volunteers, mobilized, contract soldiers. Behind each there is a certain feat. Of course, not everyone could even be photographed, not to mention signatures with call signs: the enemy could use them to figure out locations.”
You have to make sketches on cardboard, then finalize them.
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“The first exhibition was organized in December in the Kherson region. As a result, over the course of a year, I held about 15 exhibitions in the Northern Military District zone, in cultural centers that miraculously survived,” says the artist. “Many fighters from whom I painted portraits ask me to send the work to their loved ones.” “photo” data-crop-ratio=”0.701610140459061″ data-crop-width=”600″ data-crop-height=”421″ data-source-sid=”not_rian_photo” class=”lazyload” width=”1920″ height =”1347″ decoding=”async” />
In April, President Vladimir Putin instructed the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense of Russia, together with regional authorities, to ensure the creation of municipal museums dedicated to the events of the Northern Military District and the exploits of its participants. The first one has already been opened in Saratov.
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