Brittle Memory
The History of the Blockade Museum
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Visitors to the State Memorial Museum for the Defence and Blockade of Leningrad on Solianoi pereulok have no idea of the site’s dramatic history. Already during the Wehrmacht’s siege, the first exhibition came into being right after the winter of hunger in 1942. From this emerged a museum, which enjoyed a great deal of popularity before it was closed in the wake of the “Leningrad Affair” during the period of late Stalinsim. Most of the exhibits were destroyed. Only during Perestroika was the blockade museum founded again. Now a new permanent exhibition is to recall one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2011, pp. 343–352)