Memory of Russia: Exhibition “The whole Russia remembers…Monuments to the Patriotic War of 1812 in Saint-Petersburg”

November 29, 2012 the Peter and Paul Fortress (Saint-Petersburg) presents an exhibition “The whole Russia remembers…Monuments to the Patriotic War of 1812 in Saint-Petersburg”.

The exhibition, timed to the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, is dedicated to the preserving memory of one the most significant events of the Russian history over the past two centuries. Exhibits of the exhibition are projects and models of architectural and sculptural monuments, award medals and flags, documents, photographs, numismatics, posters, greeting cards, household items.

The victory, won by Russian over Napoleonic France in 1812, is the subject of many works of art. In Saint-Petersburg in memory of the glorious victories of the Russian army there was constructed a number of architectural and sculptural monuments: the Kazan Cathedral and the Alexander Column, the Narva Triumphal Gate, the Arch of the General Staff, the Military Gallery of 1812 in the Winter Palace, the monuments of M. I. Kutuzov and B. Barclay de Tolly, the gates "To my dear colleagues" in Tsarskoye Selo and the Oranienbaum city gates, etc. These monuments, survived to our time, are well known.

Paintings and drawings, works of decorative art of the XIX-XX century, presented at the exhibition in the Peter and Paul Fortress captured these famous monuments on different historical epochs. A special integrity is a complex of subjects, presented the Alexander Column: the model of a column, commemorative medals in honor of laying and after its opening, lithographs, porcelain products of the Imperial Porcelain factory with its images, multimedia program, showing an installation process of the Alexander Column at the Palace Square.

The exhibition will also recall about little-known or lost monuments of the patriotic War of 1812 in Saint-Petersburg. Among them are monument to Leonty Korennoy – a soldier of Life Guards of the Finnish regiment, the hero of the Battle of Borodino and “Battle of Nations” at Leipzig. The monument was set I the early XX century inside the building of the Officer’s meeting in Vasilyevsky Island, after it was transferred to the yard of the A. V. Suvorov museum, where today you can see only its pedestal.

The set in the garden of the Military Medical Academy of a monument to Yakov Vasilyevich Wylie is little-known; he was a military doctor, surgeon, and physician of the Imperial Court, president of the Saint-Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy, who during the war was in the army, operated and organized medical assistance, crating temporary hospitals near the battlefield.

The exposition also introduces with contemporary monuments to the Patriotic War of 1812, set in the city.

The museum holdings preserves exhibits related to the 100th and 150th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812. The exhibition features photographs of festive events to mark 100th anniversary o the War, held in Saint-Petersburg in 1912; a series of commemorative postcards with images of all kinds and types of troops of the Russian army, taken part in the battles of the War of 1812: the hussars, dragoons, the Horse Guards, the Cossacks, cuirassiers, lancers, mounted rangers and others (the drawings of N. V. Zaretsky from the album "The Russian army in 1812", 1911), as well as commemorative medals and tokens, souvenir production, commodity packaging, stamps, labels with anniversary symbols of 1912 and 1962.

A special place in the exposition is given to the exhibits associated with the period of the Great Patriotic War. The exhibition presents posters and cartoons of Kukryniky, which draw a direct parallel between Napoleon and Hitler's expansionist campaigns in Russia and their inglorious end.

The exhibition is complemented with materials on famous battles and heroes of the patriotic War of 1812. Among the interesting exhibits are uniform of French army of brigadier general and award banners Life Guards Grenadier Regiment and the Life Guards regiment of Moscow; inkstand, which according to legend was used by Alexander I at the time of signing the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, and a medal to commemorate the Patriotic War of 1812 year, kept in the family Kutuzov.

The exhibition is accompanied with a guide book “Monuments of the patriotic War of 1812 in Saint-Petersburg”.