The City That Didn’t Give Up. How the Museum of the Defense of Moscow preserves the memory of the war

The State Museum of the Defense of Moscow was founded in 1979. Its initial collection consisted of letters, documents and personal belongings of the participants of the Battle of Moscow. Today, there are more than four thousand items in the permanent exhibit, including weapons, uniforms and vehicles. Here dry historical facts are filled with living content, because literally behind each exhibit are the lives of people who defended their hometown. And professionals, such as Alexei Luchkin, who carefully and lovingly preserve the memory of the Battle of Moscow and its heroes.

— On May 9, the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory, “Culture of Moscow” is at the Museum of the Defense of Moscow, and with us is Alexei Luchkin, deputy director for scientific and methodological work, who will talk about the important battle and that multi-layered history, which included the feat of the army and all those who worked on the home front in the capital.

— I congratulate you on this incredible date—the Great Victory Day. This is truly the greatest feat of the Soviet people, which we have no right to forget and no right to allow history to be rewritten. The Battle of Moscow became the prologue of the Great Victory: it was under the walls of the capital that the Nazis were first defeated. Throughout the history of World War II, since its inception, the Germans have received a strong rebuke. Not only were they unable to get close to the city, they were unable to enter it—they were also thrown back.

— I mean, they thought they were going to parade on November 7.

— That’s right, they were even going to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Not far from Mozhaisk an abandoned train was found, with champagne bottles and iron crosses to award to the participants of the battle in Moscow. But it didn’t work out. It was an incredible battle in scale, numbers of men and equipment—the grandest battle by that time. One can only put Stalingrad in parallel with what was happening near Moscow. The capital was quite actively preparing both for defense and for different scenarios of events. It was no secret that the city was booby-trapped. One of the stages of the Vakhtangov Theater became just such a mine station, where all the wires converged.

Bombardment of Moscow began actually exactly one month after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and the first shells were dropped on the city on June 22, 1941. But the internal defense system was organized to prevent the consequences of air raids: dropping incendiary bombs, constant duty on the roofs of houses, installed anti-aircraft guns. Even before the war, there were already so-called aviation fields around Moscow, where there were special catching stations. A few kilometers before approaching the city, we were catching enemy planes. Moscow of the early 1940s is half-wooden—the disaster could have been irreparable for a city that could have simply burst into flames and burned.

— I have read that during the entire period of Moscow’s defense—almost seven months—no more than three percent of German planes reached the city.

— Absolutely. Then we must not forget that the Great Patriotic War is usually daytime bombing, because at night it is very difficult to navigate, there is no internal illumination of the cockpit of the airplane, there are no searchlights that can directly illuminate what is ahead of you. And Moscow also defended itself with barrage balloons: when they rise at night, you can’t see them. And we have developed a system of gas holders to recharge these balloons with gas in the air.

— And we had searchlights to illuminate the flying airplanes.

— The Germans tried to fly over at night. But by getting caught in the spotlight, they were signing their own death sentence. There were even special posters with silhouettes of German airplanes—how they look in the searchlights, so as not to confuse them with the Soviet ones.

We must not forget: we changed Moscow with camouflage. The Lenin Mausoleum turned into a residential two-story house, the Bolshoi Theater—into park areas. The Kremlin became a forest and individual houses. Camouflaged Derivation channel, camouflaged neighborhoods. The Ostankino Palace, draped in painted netting, simply blended in with the general forested area to hide landmarks. Painted gold domes of the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin. Imagine a picture: the Germans have a map of 1938, they fly over the city, and the usual triangle of the Kremlin is simply not there.

— When you have to literally turn around a theater action on the scale of a huge city, I can’t even imagine how many people must be working. And how were they able to do that?

— They thought about only one thing: not to allow the enemy to the walls of Moscow, and this was the primary task. And, naturally, everything worked 24 hours, seven days a week. There was a task to be accomplished here and now.

Moscow did not have a huge reserve of time, especially after leaving Smolensk and Mozhaisk, especially since it is worth considering the speed with which the Germans were approaching the city. Absolutely everyone responded: women and children who went to build defenses, and a huge number of volunteers, divisions of the people’s militia...

— And the people’s militia was formed by districts?

— Yes, each district of Moscow had to give a division. But the number of people was so great that if you took everyone who wanted to, in these divisions, Moscow would be completely paralyzed. And we need to support the remaining enterprises. Our metro worked non-stop throughout the Battle of Moscow.

— Did many people from Moscow evacuate?

— From Moscow were evacuated first of all parents with children, qualified employees together with enterprises—this amounted to about 64 percent of the city’s residents.

— Can you name the most demanded professions and work areas in the city at that time?

— Moscow’s defense was primarily supported by the textile industry. Although the machine tools were taken out, the factories remained to produce shells, weapons, explosive mixtures and so on. The champagne factory made bottles for the famous Molotov cocktail. The Vympel plant, which specialized in children’s clothing, began producing parachutes.

Naturally, medicine. The famous blood transfusion system we use now. In three months they developed an amazing field hospital technology. Unlike other armies, we saved 70 percent of the wounded exactly in the field with all the transitional parts, the blood transfusion system: its delivery, warming up, directly infusion—the most powerful system. The chemical industry also remained in Moscow and functioned constantly.

As early as in January 1942, when it became clear that the counter-offensive was successful, the inhabitants of Moscow began to return to Moscow, on January 1 there were Christmas trees for children in the center of the city with gifts and everything else. In September 1942 the whole educational process was completely restored. Schools opened in September for children who stayed in Moscow and did not evacuate. In fact, huge numbers of locksmiths and technicians remained in the city to keep it alive: running trains, running water and sewer systems, and gas supplies. The city lived, theaters and the conservatory continued their work theaters, concerts were given.

— What did the life of an ordinary Muscovite consist of? How do you live in a city like this? How do you go to the conservatory? What kind of people were these beautiful people who were able to remain human in this horror and, for example, reach for culture?

— I think it’s some variant of our genetic code. This is our home, our country, and we will sink our teeth into the enemy on our own doorstep.

And all institutions had to work to create a comfortable environment for human beings. They must at some point forget why we reach for culture. It’s a kind of oblivion system. There’s a bomb going off, but we’re going to hear Tchaikovsky at the conservatory. If we don’t go there, it won’t stop the bombs from going off. For some persons, the sounds of music may have drowned out the sounds of the bombing.

— Do you have in the exhibit, you know, your most favorite, most human story?

— Perhaps the most touching thing that really gets everyone’s heartstrings is the stories about the child’s role in the Battle of Moscow. It’s just a huge layer. We have a famous story on our mezzanine—Pokruchin’s skis. The skis that a child gave to a soldier so that he could deliver the necessary message—a packet that the offensive was moving forward, “We’re getting through, comrades.” The kid gave them with the words, “Uncle, be sure to return them.” And he gave them back. After the war, the soldier searched for this boy for several years, because, except for a name he misheard and a surname he misremembered, he knew nothing... However he lost one pole on the way, so our skis are exhibited without it.

Or the feat of our nurses. The girls from the movie “The House I Live In,” who had just finished school, left without having dreamed, and then together with the divisions of the People’s Militia fell into the cruelest meat grinder near Vyazma. They survived, went to concentration camps, nursed our soldiers there. And then they kept these scraps of Auschwitz fabric that we have here for the rest of their lives. And they even wrote in their memoirs so that all those who would come after them would remember how terrible and monstrous it was. And if we forget now, we won’t be forgiven tomorrow.

— Alexei, how to keep this memory, how to pass this knowledge to new generations?

— Here, the further a generation goes, the more, of course, it all needs to be reworked, reinterpreted and talked about differently. The most obvious example for kids, oddly enough, are movies, they have really started to watch them, and that’s encouraging. I’ll give you a personal example. On the first day of the show, my daughter and I went to see “He Was not on the Lists”—an amazing story, an incredible feat of the Brest Fortress. And when both me and the child actually begin to have inner hysteria from the phrase: “My rank is Russian soldier,” and when the Germans salute the protagonist, and the famous phrase: “The fortress did not fall: it just bled. I’m the last drop of its blood,” it becomes clear that half the audience is sobbing along with your child. They let it pass through themselves, realized the monstrosity of the catastrophe and the feat of a single person. The Battle of Moscow means millions of participants, millions of victims, but each of them was part of a huge mechanism that brought the victory closer.

A Russian man may die, but he will never give up. The next one will come after him, the second, the third one. For us, this sense of inner patriotism is contagious. And you realize that there is a Danko who will tear his heart out and go forward, and there are millions of such persons, as it turned out during the Great Patriotic War. The country stood up with their hearts torn out and marched forward.