The Defence of the Achievements of Socialism in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)
Throwing down the fascist banners to the Lenin mausoleum. 1945
The exposition begins with two documents from two different years: one is Lenin's decree “The Socialist Fatherland is in
Danger” of February 21, 1918, These documents are directly connected: in a critical time for the Motherland, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, guided by Lenin's teaching on the defence of the socialist society, turned to the people with the appeal to rise to the struggle with the enemy. The famous placard, "Your Mother-Country is Calling!", from the years of the war, by artist I.Toidze, is displayed on the central wall. An issue of the newspaper Pravda of July 3,1941 with the speech of J.V.Stalin, Chairman of the State Defence Committee, documentary photographs, "Columns of Infantry on the Road to the Front, June 1941", and "Military Parade in Moscow, November 7, 1941", are among the exhibit items here. (see Stalin's articles about Lenin at the Defend Lenin mausoleum! site) ... It was a cold, snowy November in the first year of the war. Leaving footprints in the wet snow that covered Red Square, the soldiers, dressed in field coats carrying military weapons, marched past the Mausoleum. They set out for the frontline positions directly from Red Square, in order to block Hitler's army on its way to Moscow. And another military parade is represented in a photograph in this hall. It is the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945, in which the victorious soldiers who saved the world from fascism marched .across Red Square. They were throwing the military standards with the black eagles and swastikas of the defeated fascist divisions and regiments onto the steps of the Mausoleum.... (see materials about Red Square history at the Defend Lenin mausoleum! site) "... Every time a difficult situation arose during the war, the Party mobilised Communists," said Lenin during the years of the Civil War. Every second soldier in the Great Patriotic War was a Communist or Komsomol member. Priceless relics of the war lie on the display stands and cases: Party and Komsomol membership cards pierced with shell-splinters; applications of soldiers and commanders in the Red Army for membership in Lenin's Party; newspapers published by underground district committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in territories temporarily occupied by the enemy. Partisan oaths signed in blood, earth from the Mamayev Kurgan (Mound) saturated with the blood of the defenders of Stalingrad. Visitors can see here banners awarded collectives and military units in the name of the State Defence Committee. Models of weapons and military equipment from the time of the Great Patriotic War, a map-diagram of the “Victory of the Soviet People In the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", orders and medals of the USSR are also displayed in the hall. A copy of the sculpture of V. I. Lenin made in 1926 by G.Manizer is displayed in the hall. The sculpture has an interesting history. In 1935 a bronze copy of this sculpture was cast at the Leningrad bronze smelting plant for the city of Pushkin in the Leningrad region. In October 1943 Hitler's troops, temporarily occupying Pushkin, sent the monument to Germany to the city of Eisleben for melting down. However, a group of anti-fascists there preserved the monument and on July 2, 1945, it was erected on the city square. The victory of the Soviet people in the war of 1941-1945 confirmed V.I.Lenin's words: "A nation in which the majority of the workers and peasants realise, feel and see that they are fighting for their own Soviet power, for the rule of the working people, for the cause whose victory will ensure them and their children all the benefits of culture, of all that has been created by human labour-such a nation can never be vanquished."
Throwing down the fascist banners to the Lenin mausoleum |
