Saving Stalin's Imperial City by Maddox Steven M

Author:Maddox, Steven M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Oktiabrskii

140

185

7,400

Frunzenskii

83

124

4,960

Dzerzhinskii

102

120

4,800

Kuibyshevskii

90

112

4,480

Petrogradskii

73

108

4,320

Nevskii

59

107

4,280

Vyborgskii

69

92

3,680

Moskovskii

75

88

3,520

Kirovskii

63

83

3,400

Vasileoostrvoskii

55

82

3,280

Kalininskii

54

75

3,000

Leninskii

59

69

2,760

Zhdanovskii

61

66

2,640

Smol’ninskii

50

65

2,600

Sverdlovskii

38

59

2,360

Totals

1,071

1,437

57,480

Source: TsGAIPD SPb, f. 25, op. 18, d. 92, l. 13.

The city party committee played an influential role in promoting attendance at the museum, and thereby a more widespread dissemination of the blockade narrative. City officials understood that the blockade’s message of sacrifice for the city could best be inculcated in migrants, and Leningraders themselves, through attendance at the museum. In light of this, party activists organized group excursions from most, if not all, of the city’s places of work. Official party publications, such as Bloknot agitatora and the Leningrad press, summoned activists to make wide use of the exhibition and museum, noting that it offered the “richest” of materials for both “working on oneself in preparing for talks” and “mass agitational work among the laborers of Leningrad.”105 Such calls were well received by activists throughout the city, who saw an opportunity to expose people who had not lived through the war in Leningrad to the realities of the city’s experience. At times when it was felt that museum attendance had declined in certain districts, both the museum and the Department of Agitation and Propaganda pushed for more work to be carried out by activists in those districts. The parties involved noticed a higher number of people attending the museum from areas in which activist work on the blockade was carried out daily.106 Indeed, activists played an important role in organizing excursions to the museum from the city’s factories, plants, and institutes. According to party activists’ reports, these excursions made “great impressions” on people and provided a “new flood of strength” among workers.107

Throughout the early postwar period – until mid-1949 – the Museum of the Defense of Leningrad was the second-most-popular museum in the city, behind only the State Hermitage. By May 1949, five years after it opened, 1,565,300 people had visited the exhibition and the museum, a truly astounding number given that the museum had been closed for certain periods of time to allow for the reconstruction of halls and exhibits.108 Although the attendance record was impressive, it must be noted that it involved a certain element of coercion; organized excursions were often mandatory, meaning that people could receive reprimands at their places of work if they did not attend the museum with their coworkers. The party leadership wanted to see museum attendance increase to ensure that the state-sponsored memory of the blockade – which promoted a narrative of Leningrad exceptionalism and silenced issues that ran counter to the heroic myth of the war – would become a central part of people’s lives in the postwar period. The museum thus evolved into a place of pilgrimage, learning, and propaganda that could be visited year round.

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