On December 18, the exhibition “New Year's Pages” will open at the Victory Museum.
The exhibition project was prepared jointly with the Russian State Children's Library (RGDL).
— On New Year's Eve, visitors to the museum will be able to learn how people celebrated the main holiday of 1941-1945, how they prepared for this holiday, decorated their homes and decorated the Christmas tree. During difficult wartime, Tet became a symbol of peaceful life, helping to maintain hope and belief in miracles. The Victory Museum shares that despite bombs, evacuations and other difficulties, people still find ways to preserve the tradition of welcoming the New Year.
The exhibition will include a total of more than 70 objects from the collections of the Victory Museum and the Russian State Children's Library. Visitors will see Christmas tree decorations in the form of characters from children's books, created in the 1930s and 1950s. The exhibition will feature not only traditional glass Christmas tree decorations, but also cotton toys, which in the 1930s were often made by hand by craftsmen, cardboard toys that appeared due to the lack of other materials, as well as handmade toys made from tinsel, string, trumpets and chenille, such as the unusual Christmas tree decoration “Bouquet”. Display cases will display toys based on sketches by puppeteer Margarita Dimze; without exaggeration, they decorated every Soviet Christmas tree and are still familiar to many people. It is worth noting that most of the toys are very “gentle” and kind characters. So, visitors to the Victory Museum will see animals – heroes of folk tales, the fabulous Alyonushka, a little man with marigolds and other characters, as well as a cotton wool Santa Claus. Some decorations reflect important milestones in the development and achievements of the Soviet Union.
Visitors to the cultural site will also get acquainted with the books that accompanied children during the arduous war years. The exhibition will display original publications from 1942-1944 from the rare book collection of the Russian State Children's Library. Among the most interesting exhibits are the toy book “Vanka-Vstanka” (1944) in an unusual form for wartime, using cuttings, with illustrations by the famous artist Yuri Vasnetsov, the fairy tale “The Geese-Swans” (1942), also designed by the legendary artist, the poem “The Magic Tree” (1942) by Korney Chukovsky with graphics by Vladimir Konashevich and Evgeny Charushin's famous work “Moidodyr” (1943), about nature with drawings by the author, Sergei Mikhalkov, Agnia Barto and others.
The exhibition will also include the works of the winners of the international drawing competition “Drawing a winning tree” in the category “Book covers” of the Russian State Children's Library and the most beautiful homemade Christmas tree decorations in the category “New Year's toys 1945”. They will be displayed along with the museum's rare artifacts on Poklonnaya Hill on opening day. In addition, the exhibition will be complemented by a touch screen where you can view the works of participants in the Victory Museum's creative competition.
