The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

specIal DeVelopment proGrammes specIal DeVelopment proGrammes
The 65th anniversary of the victory
in the Second world war
preSenTaTion of The proJecT By
The archiTecT alexander niKolSKy creaTed
in The BeSieged leningrad in 1942
On 5 May 2010, the Project for a Temporary Triumphal Arch
to Greet the Troops was presented in the Armorial Hall of the
Winter Palace. Designed by Alexander Nikolsky in 1942,
during the siege of Leningrad, it is a part of a series of drawings
he made between October 1941 and February 1942.
The drawing shows the view of Prospekt Stachek in the Avtovo
District with the residential buildings built in 1937–
1941. Nikolsky’s professional activity in the pre-war decade
was focused on this district, which was also hotly contested
during the fierce defence of the city in the autumn and
winter of 1941. A column of KV-85 tanks is shown parading
along the avenue: they were the first Soviet-made
heavy tanks which defended the frontline in the autumn
and winter of 1941. Ten years after the outbreak of the
war, a monument to a KV-85 tank was erected in Morskoi
Pekhoty Street to honour the defenders of Leningrad.
On 22 January 1942, Alexander Nikolsky wrote in his diary:
“I firmly believe the siege will be lifted soon, and I have
started contemplating the triumphal arches to greet the
heroic troops who liberate Leningrad”.
Triumphal arches were constructed in Leningrad for the
ceremonial greeting of the victorious troops on 8 July
1945.
The drawings and watercolours by the artists and architects
who refused to be evacuated from Leningrad and
continued working during the siege are precious witnesses
to the life of the city during that time. Many of the artists
were involved in civic defence, camouflaging the airfields
and other sites, evacuating museum collections, keeping
anti-aircraft watch on the roofs. By December 1941, most
of them had to live a barracks-style life to survive and were
lodging in the Union of Artists building, in the cellars of
the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Academy of Arts,
which were used as makeshift air-raid shelters.
Alexander Nikolsky’s drawings became the chronicle
of life in Leningrad in 1941–1942. He was an accomplished
draughtsman, and his clear, well-structured drawings
reveal the artist’s thought and expose the heart of the
composition he had in mind.
Nikolsky’s wartime drawings capture the horrible marks
of war with documentary precision: the ruined buildings,
the camouflaged monuments, the air balloons and barricades
in the city streets and squares in his views of Leningrad
under siege and its everyday life. Of special note are
the illustrations to the architect’s siege diary of 1941–1942.
These pencil drawings recreate the atmosphere of the besieged
city with its everyday heroism.
Alexander Nikolsky. Project for a Temporary Triumphal Arch
to Greet the Troops
preSenTaTion of ediTionS dedicaTed
To The Second world war
On 24 May 2010, an evening event marking the 65th anniversary
of the victory in the Second World War organized
by the State Hermitage and the Worldwide Club of St. Petersburgers
was held in Menshikov Palace.
Two editions were presented to the audience: Lev Pumpiansky.
The Hermitage: Poems. Letters to the Family (Yekaterinburg:
the Novoye Vremya Mid-Urals Publishing House, 2009) and
Voice of Your Heart (St. Petersburg: Petrocentr, 2010).
The collection of works by Lev Pumpiansky (1889–1943),
a prominent Leningrad art historian, Dean of the Faculty
of the History of Art of the Russian Academy of Arts, includes
a poetic cycle dedicated to the Hermitage written
during the years of the siege, and the works published
during his lifetime and letters to his family written between
1906 and 1943.
a warTime vegeTaBle paTch
in The hanging gardenS
A special event marking the 65th anniversary of the victory
in the Second World War and the 69th anniversary of the
start of the siege of Leningrad was held in the Hermitage
on 10 September 2010.
A corner of a “vegetable patch of the siege days” was recreated
in the Hanging Gardens of the Small Hermitage
with the help of LLC Neolik and the Prinevskoye horticultural
enterprise. It forms part of the project “Hermitage–2014”.
The vegetable garden was reconstructed on
the basis of documents from the Academic Archives of the
State Hermitage, which include drawings by A. Kaplun,
V. Miliutina (1942), and V. Kuchumov (1945). The project
was supervised by the Deputy Director for Construction
M. Novikov.
According to the archives, potatoes, cabbages, carrots,
swedes, beetroot, turnips, spring onions, spinach, and dill
were all planted in the Hanging Gardens and the Great
Courtyard of the Winter Palace in 1943. Ash was used
as a fertilizer.
The gathering of the harvest in the Hanging Gardens was
timed to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the
siege. The vegetables harvested from the “wartime patch”
were used to make pies which were presented to the museum’s
oldest members of staff. L. Voronikhina, Leading
Methodologist of the Education Department, told the
guests about the life of the museum and its staff during
the siege years.
The event was organized with the help of Fazer Food
Services.
During the grim years of the siege, Lev Pumpiansky turned
to the “eternal values”, poetic contemplations on the masterpieces
of world art. The original plan for the cycle included:
an Introduction, the Antiquity Section, the Middle
Ages, Flanders and Holland, France. A public reading of
some of the poems from the cycle finished by the summer
of 1942 was held on 15 August of the same year. The Hermitage
Cycle remained unfinished.
The album Voice of Your Heart is a collection of creative
works by the students of the Nikolai Roerich Art College.
It includes pictorial and sculptural studies, posters, literary
sketches and essays.
The history of the wartime class of 1943/44 – archive documents,
photographs, memories of the war years which
open the book, – echo the thoughts of the students of the
turn of the 21st century, which focus on the war, the lives
of the people, the “proud and tragic” pages of the life in
the besieged Leningrad.
Harvest from the Hermitage Hanging Gardens
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