JV Stalin Museum – Mamayev Kurgan – Stalingrad

Stalin Museum - Mamayev Kurgan

Stalin Museum – Mamayev Kurgan

JV Stalin Museum – Mamayev Kurgan – Stalingrad

This is a very strange museum – not to what it is dedicated – but for its location and very existence. Mamyev Kurgan is probably the most revered war memorial in the whole of the Soviet Union/Russia – and that would include those Republics which broke away amidst the chaos of the early 1990s. And yet just a few hundred metres behind the mammoth statue is a private hotel and restaurant which just happens to have a small, three room museum to JV Stalin in the basement. How that has been allowed in such a location is a mystery to me.

It’s a very amateurish collection, doesn’t have a great deal of structure and not all the exhibits are displayed in the best way possible. It would probably be fair to say no one with curator skills has been involved in the project.

It is, therefore, nothing like the Stalin Museum in Gori in Georgia. That museum has been established on a scale the museum in Stalingrad could only dream about. However, there are a few items that I hadn’t seen before and although not everything is on display I was given the impression that in the collection there are a lot of original documents and newspaper clippings that might be hard to find other than in the national archives in Moscow.

It is hoped this post gives an idea of what’s on display. The lighting conditions are not of the best and that has had an impact on the images but you should be able to get an idea of what’s on show. A slight diversion along the paths at the back of The Motherland Calls! for anyone who visits the monument would repay the effort.

Location;

Imani Mershala Rokossovsky 102

GPS;

48.74132 N

44.53259 E

How to get there;

The museum (and the hotel of which it is a part) is behind the monument of The Motherland Call! on Mamayev Kurgan, as the path goes down the hill.

The Cruiser Aurora – Leningrad (Saint Petersburg)

Cruiser Aurora - Никонико962

Cruiser Aurora – Никонико962

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The Cruiser Aurora – Leningrad (Saint Petersburg)

The Aurora is famous for playing a symbolic role in the October Revolution of 1917 (although it’s crew were staunch Bolsheviks and the ship played the role as an organisational base for the planning of the seizure of power).

The Cruiser Aurora - M Dobrov

The Cruiser Aurora – M Dobrov

On the night of October 25-26 1917 a blank shot from her forecastle gun was fired at the Winter Palace giving the signal to the revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors of the city to storm the palace.

It suffered severe damage during the Nazi siege of Leningrad – 8 September 1941 –
27 January 1944 – but was re-floated after the war. Its latest renovation was completed in 2016 and is now moored off Petrovskaya Naberezhnaya, opposite the Nakhimov Navy School, and is maintained by the cadets of the school.

The Cruiser Aurora

The Cruiser Aurora

It features in the background of the mosaic at one end of the platform in the city’s Baltiyskaya metro station.

Nearest Metro:

Gorkovskaya

Opening times:

Daily, 11.00 – 18.00 (apart from Monday and Friday)

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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B)

Leader, teach, friend

Leader, teach, friend

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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B)

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B) was a Party of a new kind. Based upon the principals of Marxism-Leninism it led the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union in the struggle to build a Socialist society in a sixth of the world’s land mass.

Further speeches and reports from other CPSU(B) (and its predecessors) conferences and congresses can be found in the collected works of VI Lenin and JV Stalin.

Report of the XV Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, CPGB, London, 1928, 415 pages.

From the First to the Second Five-Year Plan, a Symposium, J Stalin, V Molotov, L Kaganovich, K Voroshilov and others, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow, 1933, 490 pages.

The Revolutionary Crisis is Maturing, DZ Manuilsky, report to the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on behalf of the Delegation of the CPSU in the Communist International, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1934, 48 pages.

On the Organization of Party Propaganda in connection with the publication of the History of the CPSU(B) Short Course, FLPH, Moscow, 1939, 1976 reprint, 23 pages.

On the Organisation of Party Propaganda, CPSU(B), 1939, e-format, 22 pages.

The Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, Reports and speeches at the 18th Congress of the CPSU(B), March 10-21 1939, FLPH, Moscow, 1939, 488 pages.

Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) on the Work of the Central Committee, JV Stalin, March 10, 1939, FLPH, Moscow, 1951, 108 pages.

The Growing Prosperity of the Soviet Union, N Voznesensky, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, USSR, delivered at the 18th All Union Conference of the Soviet Union February 18 1941, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1941, 48 pages.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Syllabus for six lectures on the history of the CPSU, with notes on reading, CPGB, London, 1942, 31 pages.

History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – short course, edited by a commission of the CC of the CPSU(B), Cobbett Publishing, London, 1943, 345 pages.

History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, FLPH, Moscow, 1945, 364 pages.

The structure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), FLPH, Moscow, 1951, 39 pages.

Report to the Nineteenth Party Congress of the work of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B), G Malenkov, FLPH, Moscow,1952, 147 pages.

Reports to the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet Leaders Speak for Communism and Peace, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, New Century Publishers, New York, 1952, 49 pages.

Speech at the 19th Party Congress, JV Stalin, October 14, 1952, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 20 pages. One of the last public speeches and appearances before his death in March 1953.

Report on the directives of the XIXth Party Congress relating to the Fifth Five-year Plan for the development of the USSR in 1951-1955, M Saburov, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 72 pages.

50th anniversary of the CPSU, 1903-1953, FLPH, Moscow, 1953, 18 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 1, The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 338 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 2, The Early Soviet Period, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 396 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 3, The Stalin years 1929-1953, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 339 pages.

Outline History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Part I, Nikolai Popov, Martin Lawrence, London, 1934, 414 pages.

Outline History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Part II, Nikolai Popov, Martin Lawrence, London, 1934, 460 pages.

This history (above) of the CPSU(B) pre-dates the more famous History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) Short Course, which was first published in 1939 – and appeared in subsequent editions into the early 1950s. These volumes by Popov were also subject of criticism by JV Stalin.

Resolutions and decisions – including Party Rules, adopted at the 17th Congress of the CPSU, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow, 1934, 82 pages.

Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted by the 19th Congress, FLPH, Moscow, 1953, 30 pages.

The Programme and Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), adopted at 8th Congress, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow, 1932, 62 pages.

Attempts to revive a Revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in Russia

Programmatic Proclamation of the Soviet Revolutionary Communists (Bolsheviks). (This programmatic proclamation has been distributed in the Soviet Union by the Soviet Bolshevik Communists.), originally Published by Red Star Press, London, 1975. November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2022, 102 pages.

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