The State Museum of Defenсe and Blockade of Leningrad and the Presidential Library made the first move in creating a virtual museum of memory

The Virtual Open Museum of Memory about Defence and Blockade of Leningrad will unite museums of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region. The first step in implementing a large-scale project to preserve historical memory was made in the Presidential Library, where a virtual tour around the exposition of the State Museum of Defence and Blockade of Leningrad was held.

The main goal of the new project is to make it so that the heroism and courage of the defenders of Leningrad to be known and remembered not only by the residents of our region, but also by Russia and the whole world, noted acting Director General of the Presidential Library Valentin Sidorin.

The Open Museum will include virtual tours around blockade expositions of the museums of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, the total number of which today is about 170. Together they will form a unique public resource that can be used for educational, training, exhibition and academic purposes.

It is noteworthy that the event is held on the eve of September 8 - the anniversary of the beginning of the blockade, said the Chairman of the Committee on Culture of the Government of St. Petersburg Konstantin Sukhenko. He also added that today it was very important to look for new forms and use modern opportunities to preserve historical memory and the Presidential Library project fully meets these requirements.

The first virtual tour around expositions of the Museum of Defence and Blockade of Leningrad makes it possible to "walk through" halls and in details to examine authentic wartime items, most of which are accompanied by an exhaustive and carefully selected information about the exhibit, its history, context, etc. It is noteworthy that the exposition is available exclusively in the digital space - in 2018 the museum was closed for major repairs, after which the visitors will be presented fully updated exposition.

The next stage in the implementation of the project to create an Open Museum of Memory will be a virtual tour around the museum "Kobona: The Road of Life", Lesya Kolesnikova, director of the Museum Agency of Leningrad Region, told about this. She also noted: "For organizations that preserve the memory of the events of the Great Patriotic War, the defence and the blockade of Leningrad, it is important and necessary to have a common, including information, resource. And the new project, initiated by the Presidential Library, is just one of those mechanisms that will allow us to combine knowledge". A virtual tour around the new exposition of one of the branches of the Museum Agency "Kobona: The Road of Life" will be presented to the general public in the second half of September 2018.

The virtual tour around the exposition of the Museum of Defence and Blockade of Leningrad, is available at http://blokadamus.ru/3d/MuBlock.html.